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AMERICAN STATESMEN 

EDITED BY 

JOHN T. MORSE, JR. 

IN THrRTT-TWO VOLUMES 

VOL. xxvn. 



THE CIVIL WAR 
WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 



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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 



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WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 



BY 



THORNTON KIRKLAND LOTHROP 




BOSTON AND NEW YOKK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

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COPYRIGHT. 1896 AND 1899. BY THORNTON KIRKLAND LOTHROP 

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 






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PREFACE 

The obvious difficulty of giving within the 
limits of a single volume an adequate account of 
a statesman whose public career extended over 
a period of forty years, is increased in the case of 
Seward by the fact that the period of his political 
life was substantially coincident with that of the 
great contest for supremacy between the free 
and slave States, from the time of the passage of 
the Missouri Compromise to the close of the civil 
war, and with that of the subsequent struggle as 
to reconstruction. His first vote was cast in the 
year after the admission of Missouri as a slave 
State ; he took his seat in the New York Senate 
in January, 1831 ; he resigned the office of secre- 
tary of state of the United States in March, 1869 ; 
for twenty-eight of the intervening years he was in 
the public service, — for four years in the Senate 
of New York, and for four years the governor of 
that State. He was a senator of the United States 
during the twelve years in which the contest be- 
tween freedom and slavery was carried on in Con- 
gress with the utmost bitterness of language and 



P 



vi PREFACE 

feeling; and then, entering Lincoln's cabinet as 
secretary of state, he held that office until the in- 
auguration of General Grant as president. 

In the half century between the time when he 
came of age and his withdrawal from public life, 
there were many revolutions in political issues 
and parties, in most of which, if not in all, Sew- 
ard played a leading part. His earliest published 
political speech predicted that in this country no 
"parties upon cardinal principles would again 
arise," but only those formed as to " questions of 
limited extent, or out of regard to men of differ- 
ently estimated merit ; " yet he himself, contradict- 
ing his own prophecy, spent many of the best years 
of his life in endeavoring to induce the voters of 
the North, either to support an existing party on 
account of its fidelity to the cardinal principle of 
freedom, or to unite in building up a new one, of 
which this principle should be the corner stone ; 
and, circumstances and the mistaken passion and 
labors of his political opponents working with him, 
his efforts were at last crowned with success. 

It was a long way, however, from the purely 
personal question between Clay, Adams, and 
Crawford in the presidential election of 1824, 
through the economic issues of the United States 
Bank, of internal improvements at the public ex- 
pense, of the protection of American industry or 



PREFACE vii 

a tarifE for revenue only, to such fundamental 
political and moral problems as those connected 
with the extension or limitation of slavery, the 
nature and degree of our constitutional obligation 
as to the rendition of fugitive slaves, and other 
similar questions which convulsed the country in 
the decade from 1851 to 1860. 

The mass of the people, both North and South, 
was averse to making party issues upon matters 
so closely connected with the whole frame of our 
government and with our national life, and it was 
only gradually and by slow degrees that these 
forced themselves to the front, and at last domi- 
nated and absorbed all our politics. 

As to all these various political issues, Seward 
held decided opinions, he took a keen interest in 
them, and he became early a recognized party leader. 
It is of course impossible, in a work of this size, 
to give a detailed account of his public life ; it is 
hoped, however, that enough has been said to en- 
able the reader to see how he acquired his great 
hold upon the people, and earned the high place 
which he must always have in the history of our 
country. 

No attempt has been made to describe his by no 
means undistinguished professional labors, or his 
personal, domestic, and social life, except so far as 
these may throw light on his public career; but 



viii PREFACE 

while these omissions may affect the claim of the 
work as a complete biography, they will not, it is 
hoped, substantially diminish its value as a volume 
in the series of American Statesmen. In prepar- 
ing this edition for publication the book has been 
carefully revised, some new matter has been added, 
and facts, never before published, giving a differ- 
ent character to Mr. Seward's letter to Mr. Lin- 
coln of April 1, 1861, having come to my know- 
ledge, parts of the fifteenth chapter have been 
materially modified. 

T. K. L. 

November, 1898. 



CONTENTS 



OHAF. 



PAGE 



I. Youth. — Admission to the Bab. — FrasT Steps 

IN Politics 1 

n. Governor of New York .... 21 
ni. Professional Life. — Six Years a Private 

Citizen 39 

IV. The Compromise Eesolutions ... 61 
"V. California and the Compromises: Seward's 

Speech 82 

VI. Fillmore's Administration .... 100 

Vn. The Kepeal of the Missouri Compromise . 115 

Vin. The Formation of the Kepublican Party 133 

IX. The Struggle for Kansas . . . .151 

X. The Dred Scott Case. — The Final Struggle 

FOR Kansas 168 

XI. The Republican Convention of 1860 . . 193 

XII. The Winter of 1860-61 203 

Xin. The Cabinet. — Fort Sumter .... 226 
XIV. Justice Campbell and the Rebel Commis- 
sioners . . 237 

XV. Letter of April 1 to the President. — 

The Blockade 254 

XVI. England's Recognition of the Confederates 

AS Belligerents 271 

XVn. Negotiations as to the Treaty of Paris. — 

Suspension of the Habeas Corpus . . 288 

XVIII. The Trent 296 

XIX. Intervention. — Cabinet Difficultibs. — Eman- 
cipation "20 

XX. Diplomatic Questions of the War . . 338 
XXI. Secretary of State under Johnson. — Re- 
tirement FROM Public Life .... 364 



ILLUSTKATIONS 

William H. Seward Frontispiece 

From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the 
State Department at Wasl^ngton. 

Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston 
Public Library. 

The vignette of Mr. Seward's home, Auburn, N. Y., ia 
from a photograph in the possession of his son, Gen. 
William H. Seward. Page 

Thurlow Weed facing 144 

From a painting by Chester Harding in the possession 
of Weed's granddaughter, Mrs. George C. Hollister, Ro- 
chester, N. Y. 

Autograph from his Autobiography. 
Facsimile of William H. Seward's Handwriting facing 176 
Letter written from Washington, March 30, 1857, to 
his son, Frederick W. Seward. 

Lord Lyons facing 222 

From a photograph by Brady. 

Autograph from a MS. in the rooms of the Historical 
Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 

Charles Wilkes facing 300 

From a photograph by Gurney in 1862, kindly lent by 
his daughter, Miss Jane Wilkes. 

Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston 
Public Library. 
The Fight between the Eearsarge and the Ala- 
bama facing 348 

From the painting by H. Durand Brager in the posses- 
sion of the Union League Club, New York, N. Y. 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 



CHAPTER I 

YOUTH. — ADMISSION TO THE BAK. — FIRST STEPS 
IN POLITICS 

William Henry Seward was born on the 
16th of May, 1801, in Florida, a village in the 
town of Warwick, in the county of Orange, and 
State of New York. His father. Dr. Samuel S. 
Seward, was a physician of good standing, and 
the first vice-president of the county medical so- 
ciety. Dr. Seward was a farmer as well as physi- 
cian, and also the magistrate, storekeeper, banker, 
and money-lender of the little place. He lived to 
a good old age, dying after his son's election to 
the Senate of the United States, in 1849. 

The family was of New Jersey origin. John 
Seward, the grandfather of William Henry, served 
in the Ee volution, beginning as captain, and end- 
ing his campaigns as colonel of the First Sussex 
Kegiment. Sussex is the northernmost county of 
New Jersey, and Orange County lies on the south- 
ern border of New York, so that the migration of 



2 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

Dr. Seward did not carry him far from his origi- 
nal home. He married a Miss Jennings from the 
neighborhood of Florida, and Seward speaks of 
his mother as a "person of excellent sense, gentle- 
ness, truthfulness and candor." William Henry 
was the fourth of six children, and, after the fash- 
ion of those days, was selected, as the least physi- 
cally robust, to receive a college education. The 
village school, the academy at Goshen, and a term 
or two in a short-lived academy in Florida, gave 
him his preparatory training, and at the age of 
fifteen he passed the examination for the jimior 
class at Union College, Schenectady; though the 
rules as to age at that institution compelled him 
to enter as sophomore. 

Before going to college, Seward had taken his 
share of the household duties and labors at home. 
His father had three domestic servants (slaves, 
some of whom lived to a good old age and were 
Seward's pensioners to the end of their days); 
but William Henry drove the cows to pasture in 
the early morning and back again at night; he 
had the wood to chop and bring in, and other 
daily chores to do. He began his labors at dawn, 
and finished them at bedtime, about nine o'clock. 
At school he was a bright and studious boy, per- 
haps a bit of a prig. His first composition, an 
essay on Virtue, began : " Virtue is the best of all 
the vices." He refused, when at the academy, to 
join in a lock-out; at college he sought his tutor's 
aid that he might really get hold of his Latin, and 



YOUTH 3 

was evidently desirous to make the most of his 
opportunities. He was not wanting, however, in 
the hasty temper or the audacity of youth; and 
when an instructor had, as Seward thought, treated 
him unfairly, he remonstrated, refused to recite, 
marched out of the class-room, left the college 
buildings and established himself in a hotel, de- 
clining to return until he had received an apology. 
The judicious intervention of Dr. Nott, then and 
for nearly half a century president of Union Col- 
lege, quickly settled the matter, and Seward went 
back to his work. This seems to have been his 
only collision with the authorities; but a little 
later in his college career troubles of another sort 
came upon him. 

On his arrival in Schenectady he had been dis- 
satisfied with the work of the traveling tailor who 
had furnished his wardrobe; and, that he might 
be dressed in a less rustic fashion, he had gone to 
the shops patronized by the students. His scanty 
allowance did not enable him to pay for this ex- 
travagance, his father would not help him, and 
his creditors became clamorous; so without con- 
sulting or even informing his family, he resolved 
to abandon his college career, and begin at once 
to make his own way in the world. He quietly 
left Schenectady, joined a friend who was engaged 
to teach at the South, and sailed with him for Sa- 
vannah. His father, learning of his departure, 
started in pursuit, and endeavored unsuccessfully 
to intercept him in New York. Seward arrived 



4 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

safely in Georgia, and obtained a position there as 
the teacher of a newly established academy. His 
father learned his whereabouts and wrote in a 
rage to the trustees, threatening them with all the 
terrors of the law if they continued to harbor the 
delinquent, whom he described as "a much-in- 
dulged son, who, without any just provocation, 
had absconded from Union College, thereby dis- 
gracing a well-acquired position, and plunging his 
parents into profound shame and grief." Seward, 
however, remained at his post as teacher until the 
appointment and arrival of his successor, and then 
returned home to pass six months studying law in 
an attorney's office at Goshen. At the end of this 
time he rejoined the senior class at Union College, 
graduating with honor in 1820. His father upon 
his return was far from killing the fatted calf for 
this wandering son ; he still declined to assist him 
in paying the tailor's bills, and they were finally 
discharged by installments from Seward's own 
hard earnings. Writing of this after the lapse 
of half a century, Seward says : " I would by no 
means imply a present conviction that the fault 
was altogether with my father. On the other 
hand, I think now the fault was not altogether 
mine." As, before his own exodus, two of his 
brothers had already left home on account of 
money difficulties with their father, there was 
probably some justification for these conclusions. 

On leaving college, Seward resumed the study 
of the law, and occupied himself also with office 



ADMISSION TO THE BAR 5 

work and such other professional employment as 
he could obtain in the inferior courts. He was 
admitted to the bar at Utica in October, 1822. 
His earnings while a student had not only enabled 
him to cancel his college debts and to pay his way, 
but left him sixty dollars with which to begin life. 
He started at once for western New York, and at 
Auburn accepted an offer of a partnership with 
Elijah Miller, a leading lawyer of that town. 
How far Mr. Miller was induced to make this pro- 
posal by his good opinion of Seward's abilities, 
and how much he was influenced by his knowledge 
of the mutual interest in each other of his daughter 
Frances and the young lawyer, one cannot tell, 
but the legal partnership was speedily followed by 
a closer relation between them, Seward marrying 
Frances Miller on the 20th of October, 1824. 
His marriage was a satisfaction, and his profes- 
sional success was an agreeable disappointment to 
his father, who had dismissed him, when he left 
home to begin his practice, with a present of fifty 
dollars, and "the assurance of his constant expec- 
tation that he would come back too soon." 

Seward's first appearance in court, after his 
admission to the bar, was in defense of a convict 
just discharged from the state prison at Auburn, 
who had been warned to leave town at once. The 
temptation of an open house-door was too much 
for him. He went in and began to steal, but was 
disturbed in his operations and only got a few 
trifles. He was indicted for the larceny of a 



6 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

quilted holder and a piece of calico. Seward 
proved that the holder was sewed, not quilted, and 
that the bit of cloth was jean, not calico. The 
variance caused his client's acquittal, and his suc- 
cess in this case was followed by a considerable 
amount of criminal business. Seward was a care- 
ful draughtsman, taking pains, not merely with 
the substance but with the clerkly appearance of 
every instrument that left his office, so that he 
was much employed in this way also, and in his 
first year his professional income exceeded the five 
hundred dollars guaranteed him by Mr. Miller. 

In 1828, he was nominated by Governor Clin- 
ton for surrogate of Cayuga Coimty; but while 
he was in Albany, awaiting the confirmation of 
his appointment by the Senate, a meeting in favor 
of the renomination of President John Quincy 
Adams was held there. Clinton had just come 
out for Jackson, and a decided majority of the 
New York senators were Jackson men. Seward 
was for Adams. He went to the Adams meeting, 
and in consequence of this his nomination was re- 
jected. His name was never again submitted to a 
senate for its action until more than thirty years 
afterward, when Lincoln nominated him as secre- 
tary of state. 

In these early years of his professional life, he 
took a lively interest in the militia of the State 
of New York. He was the adjutant of the troop 
which met Lafayette on his arrival at Auburn in 
1825, and accompanied him on his night journey 



ADMISSION TO THE BAR 7 

eastward to Syracuse. A few years later he or- 
ganized a company of artillery, contributed largely 
to its equipment, and was chosen its captain. By 
successive promotions he attained the rank of briga- 
dier-general, but declined the major-general's com- 
mission which was subsequently offered him. 

Seward's family were Jeffersonian Eepublicans, 
and in the divisions which rent that party in the 
State of New York into personal factions, — on 
the one side the Tammany men, or "Buck-tails," 
as they were called, supporting Vice-President 
Tompkins ; and on the other the followers of Gov- 
ernor Clinton, "the Clintonians," — Seward at 
first remained with his father on the side of Tam- 
many. When Vice-President Tompkins visited 
Schenectady, Seward, then in the senior class, de- 
livered an address of welcome on behalf of the stu- 
dents who were of the Vice-President's party; and 
in his last college term he wrote an essay to prove 
that the Erie Canal, then in process of construction 
under Clinton's auspices, was an impossibility; 
and that, even if it could be completed, it would 
be the financial ruin of the State. But he had 
never been quite satisfied with his father's expla- 
nation of Washington's dissent from, and Hamil- 
ton's opposition to, the Eepublican party, which 
Dr. Seward attributed to an alleged failure in 
Washington's intellectual power and independence, 
and to Hamilton's desire for a monarchy. More- 
over, his original journey to Auburn had opened 
his eyes to the importance as well as to the practi- 



8 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

cability of the Erie Canal; and so it happened by 
a gradual process of change and development, that 
in 1824 he cast his vote for De Witt Clinton as 
governor, and definitively abandoned the party he 
had been educated to support. 

In the summer of 1824, before his marriage, 
Seward, with his father and mother and Mr. Mil- 
ler's family, made a journey to Niagara. As they 
were driving through Rochester on their way home, 
a wheel came off the coach, and most of the party 
were thrown out. Among the passers-by attracted 
by the accident was Thurlow Weed, then a resi- 
dent of Kochester, "the editor of a dingy weekly 
Clintonian newspaper, called the ' Monroe Tele- 
gram, ' — one of the poorest and worst dressed men 
in the town, living in a cheap house in an obscure 
part of the village;" but even then wielding a 
very decisive power in the politics of western New 
York. Weed was helpful to them in their misfor- 
tune; and this was Seward's first meeting with 
the man whose friendship and influence played so 
important a part in his whole political career. 

Not long after his return from this journey, 
Seward wrote his first published political paper, 
an Address of the county convention at Auburn, 
in October, 1824. This address was a bold on- 
slaught on the "Albany Regency," a combination 
of a dozen politicians, who, under the direction of 
Martin Van Buren, dictated for many years the 
nominations and policy of the Democratic party 
of the State of New York. On the fourth of 



FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS 9 

July, 1825, Seward spoke at Auburn, and some- 
thing of what he said is interesting as a summary 
of his own convictions at that time and his fore- 
cast of the political future : — 

"The Missouri question is settled and almost 
forgotten; the tariff bill has become a law; the 
sceptre has passed from the Ancient Dominion, 
and the union of these States is still unshaken. 
Believe me, fellow citizens, those men's wishes for 
confusion far outrun their wisdom, who believe, or 
profess to believe, that parties upon cardinal prin- 
ciples will again arise. The time and the occasion 
for these parties have alike gone by, and the at- 
tempt to rouse the vindictive feelings which once 
existed is as idle as the hope to call spirits from 
the vasty deep. New parties are yearly formed 
and as often dissolved, because they arise upon 
questions of limited extent, or out of regard to 
men of differently estimated merit. And such 
parties will succeed each other, as in rolling seas 
wave succeeds wave ; but there will at times be a 
calm, and such light and transitory excitement 
will only serve to keep the political waters in 
healthful motion. 

"Those, too, misapprehend the true interests of 
the people of these States, or their intelligence, 
who believe, or profess to believe, that a separa- 
tion will ever take place between the North and 
South. The people of the North have been sel- 
dom suspected of a want of attachment to the 
Union, and those of the South have been much 



10 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

misrepresented by a few politicians of a stormy 
character, who have ever been unsupported by the 
people there. The North will not willingly give 
up the power they now have in the national coun- 
cils, of gradually completing a work in which, 
whether united or separate, from proximity of 
territory, we shall ever be interested — the eman- 
cipation of slaves. And the South will never, 
even in a moment of resentment, expose them- 
selves to a war with the North, while they have 
such a great domestic population of slaves, ready 
to embrace any opportunity to assert their freedom 
and inflict their revenge. ... If, indeed, these 
States were to be divided by a geographical line, 
that line would be drawn along the Alleghany 
Mountains or the Mississippi River." 

The sphere of Seward's political activity for the 
next few years did not extend beyond the limits 
of his town and county, and it is not till 1828 that 
we find him appearing on a larger field of public 
affairs. In August of that year he presided over 
a convention of the young men of the State favor- 
able to the reelection of John Quincy Adams to 
the presidency. The convention numbered more 
than three hundred and fifty members, a body of 
earnest, active workers with strong political con- 
victions. It was one of the last of the state as- 
semblages of the National Republican party, which 
was utterly routed and dispersed by the Democrats 
under Jackson in the presidential election of that 
year. Upon its disappearance Seward joined, and 



FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS 11 

soon became active in, the anti-Masonic party in 
western New York, of which Thurlow Weed was 
a moving spirit. The rise and progress of this 
party is one of the most curious episodes in our 
state and national politics. 

In 1826 there lived in Batavia, in the State of 
New York, one William Morgan, a most humble 
and insignificant person, a Freemason, whose ex- 
treme poverty tempted him to publish a book, an- 
nounced as a revelation of the secrets of the order, 
by the sale of which he expected to make a good 
deal of money. Some over-zealous and misguided 
fanatics among the Masons, learning of his pro- 
posed publication, arrested him on a frivolous pre- 
text, hurried him from place to place, and at last 
procured his confinement in a deserted fort at 
Niagara. Here he utterly disappeared, having 
been, if one may trust the evidence, taken off in 
a boat and drowned in the waters of Lake Ontario. 
All attempts to detect and convict the authors of 
this crime were baffled by the powerful association 
of which they were members; but there was no 
anti-Masonic party before the summer of 1827, 
when a gentleman who had been the treasurer of 
the town of Rochester ever since its incorporation, 
and to whose reelection there was no open opposi- 
tion, was beaten at the polls by a candidate whose 
nomination even had been previously unknown. 
For this political overturn the Freemasons claimed 
the credit. The defeated officer was not a Mason; 
he had by chance been an eye-witness of something 



12 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

subsequently shown to have been connected with 
Morgan's disappearance; and he had also taken a 
prominent part in the investigations set on foot to 
discover the criminals. The result of this petty 
local election, and the consequent exultation of the 
Masons, angered the people of the village and 
county, and in the autumn anti-Masonic candi- 
dates were nominated and elected to the state 
Assembly. The next year (1828) the anti-Masons 
extended and perfected their political organization; 
they obtained control of the western covmties of 
New York; they captured some isolated towns 
elsewhere, and attracted the attention of the pub- 
lic throughout the State. They held a convention, 
nominated a candidate for governor, and succeeded 
in choosing five out of the thirty -two state senators, 
and seventeen members of the Assembly. The 
"Anti-Masonic Enquirer," Thurlow Weed's paper, 
had a circulation not merely in the western, mid- 
dle and northern counties of New York, but in 
some parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio. There was 
no general state election in 1829. In March, 
1830, the "Albany Evening Journal" was estab- 
lished as an anti-Masonic paper under Weed's 
editorship ; and a national convention of the party, 
which Seward attended, was held at Philadelphia 
in September. 

In the following year Seward came to New Eng- 
land for the first time in his life. Arriving in 
Boston on the anniversary of Morgan's abduction, 
he went to the anti-Masonic committee room, where 



FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS 13 

he was called upon to speak, and found himself 
to his surprise "preaching politics " in that city. 
He visited John Quincy Adams at Quincy, and 
the acquaintance thus begun ripened into a warm 
and enduring friendship. He found Mr. Adams 
an anti-Masonic candidate for Congress, "in- 
tensely engaged in writing a bitter polemic against 
Freemasonry." A little later there was a second 
national anti-Masonic convention at Baltimore, to 
which Seward was also a delegate. Here Chief 
Justice Marshall occupied a seat on the platform, 
and William Wirt (who had been Monroe's attor- 
ney-general) was nominated as a candidate for 
president. It was known, when this was done, 
that Henry Clay intended to be a presidential can- 
didate; but he had already expressed himself so 
strongly against the anti-Masons, that his nomina- 
tion by them was impossible. It was certain, 
therefore, that the opposition in New York to 
General Jackson's reelection would be divided, 
and it was feared that it would therefore be impos- 
sible to carry the State against him. The result 
justified this apprehension. Jackson had a deci- 
sive majority in New York, and both in the elec- 
toral college and in the country made considerable 
gains over his vote of four years before. Clay 
sustained an overwhelming defeat. Wirt received 
only the four electoral votes of Vermont. The 
two parties representing the opposition to Jackson 
were utterly crushed, and his removal of the gov- 
ernment deposits from the United States Bank in 



14 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

the following year failed to reanimate either of 
them in New York. The anti-Masons sent only 
nine members to the Assembly, as against thirty- 
five the year before, and at a conference of the 
leaders in December, 1833, it was unanimously 
agreed that the party was at an end. 

The anti-Masonic party owed its origin and its 
strength to the conviction of the leading young 
men of western New York that the existence of a 
secret society, whose members were bound to one 
another by an obligation which had been able to 
paralyze the exertions of counsel, to shut the 
mouths of witnesses or compel them to perjure 
themselves, to unnerve the arm of justice and to 
override and corrupt all departments of the govern- 
ment, was inconsistent with the safety, and even 
threatened the existence, of a popular government. 
Many men of distinction, ability, and experience 
shared these views, and supported the party ; among 
them were Chief Justice Marshall and Judge 
Story, John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, 
WiDiam Henry Harrison, Richard Rush, and Ed- 
ward Everett. The extent of their feeling about 
the matter may be judged from the fact that ex- 
President Adams and Judge Story seriously con- 
sidered whether such secrecy as there is about the 
college Greek-letter societies ought not, on public 
grounds, to be prohibited. 

A national party, however, could not be built 
up on a solitary instance either of the open defi- 
ance or secret evasion of the law in one section of 



FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS 15 

a single State. Though the popular excitement 
in New York and the neighboring States, caused 
by the Morgan affair, was natural, yet in their at- 
tacks upon the Masonic orders the anti-Masons 
overlooked for the time the benevolent purposes of 
the organization, and applied to it a general propo- 
sition, that, "Secret societies, composed of mem- 
bers bound together by unlawful oaths, and ex- 
tended over the whole land, are opposed to the 
genius of our government, subversive of the laws, 
and inconsistent with private rights and the pub- 
lic welfare." 

Seward joined the anti-Masons, as he himself 
says, because he thought them the only political 
organization, having any life, which was opposed 
to Jackson, Calhoun, and Van Buren, three politi- 
cal leaders whose policy seemed to him to involve 
"not only the loss of our national system of rev- 
enue, and of enterprises of state and national im- 
provement, but also the future disunion of the 
States, and ultimately the universal prevalence of 
slavery." It was as the representative of this 
short-lived but vigorous party that he made his 
entrance into public office, being elected in the 
autumn of 1830 to the Senate of the State. 

The New York Senate at that time consisted of 
only thirty-two members, each chosen for four 
years, their terms expiring in rotation, so that 
neither the whole Senate nor more than one mem- 
ber from a district was changed in any one year. 
Seward, when he took his seat there in January, 



16 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

1831, was only twenty-nine years old, small and 
slender, with blue eyes, light sandy hair, a smooth 
face, and a youthful air and expression which made 
him appear even younger than he was. He was 
one of a very small minority, the majority being 
all members of, or dependent on, the Albany 
Regency, the all-powerful central force of the New 
York Democracy. He had had no previous expe- 
rience in public affairs, while nearly all his fellow 
senators were not only older and more mature, but 
were familiar with their position and its labors; 
and he was for a time diffident, embarrassed and 
silent. His first set speech was an argument for a 
reform in the militia system ; the changes he then 
advocated were afterwards substantially adopted, 
and their value was shown in the prompt response 
of New York to President Lincoln's call for troops 
in April, 1861. The closing passage of this maiden 
speech of Seward's, though it may have been a 
mere rhetorical flight, has about it, in view of 
later events, a curious, prophetic ring, when he 
speaks of "the military spirit which brought the 
nation into existence, and will be able to carry 
us through the dark and perilous ways of national 
calamity yet unknown to us, but which must at 
some time be trodden by all nations." 

During his term in the Senate, he was an ear- 
nest supporter of the first law passed in New York 
abolishing imprisonment for debt except in cases 
of fraud; and an early and strenuous advocate for 
the enactment of general laws, — such as are now 



FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS 17 

found in the statute books of most States, — giv- 
ing to all citizens the right to form business corpo- 
rations, instead of creating such companies as a 
favor by special charter. 

At this time, and down to the adoption of the 
Constitution of 1846, the Senate of New York was 
not merely a branch of the legislative department; 
it had also judicial functions. Like the English 
House of Lords, it was the court of last resort; 
and a considerable portion of Seward's time was 
taken up by his judicial labors. The work was 
excellent professional training; he was interested 
in it, and discharged its duties conscientiously, and 
with distinct ability and independence. 

In the summer of 1833, Seward, at his father's 
invitation, accompanied him to Europe. The ac- 
count of his travels has no especial interest to-day, 
aside from a visit which he made to Lafayette at 
La Grange. He returned in season for his last 
winter's work as senator. 

The presidential election of 1824 had-been purely 
a personal contest. No one of the series of reso- 
lutions recommending the various candidates sug- 
gested any difference in their political opinions; 
and though in the campaign of 1828 the friends of 
Jackson attacked President Adams's position on 
the tariff, and on questions of internal improve- 
ments, no distinction could be drawn between 
Jackson and the President on these points, since 
Jackson had voted for all the measures of the kind 
that Adams supported. Jackson's first term was 



18 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

characterized by discussions and divisions as to 
the tariff and internal improvements, and by the 
opening of his attack on the United States Bank. 
Before his second election a convention of the 
young men of the National Republican party had 
adopted a series of resolutions, declaring adequate 
protection to American industry to be indispen- 
sable to the prosperity of the country, and that a 
uniform system of internal improvements, sustained 
and supported by the general government, was an 
important security for the harmony, strength and 
permanency of the republic. Yet it may fairly be 
said, taking the whole coimtry together, that the 
question of personal loyalty to Jackson entered into 
the campaign of 1832 at least as largely as any 
matter of public policy. The union of the opposi- 
tion, which was divided into National Republicans 
and anti-Masons, would not have changed the re- 
sult. 

Jackson's decisive majority authorized him, as 
he thought, to carry on a personal government for 
the next four years and to make war in such a 
way as seemed to him effectual, without regard 
to constitutional or legal limitations, upon any 
policy or institution in which he disbelieved, or 
which was supported by men who withstood his 
imperious will. The opposition, demoralized and 
disheartened by its overwhelming defeat in 1832, 
so far rallied two years later as to unite in the 
formation of the Whig party, the fundamental 
articles of whose political creed were the support 



FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS 19 

of a policy of internal improvements, protection to 
American industry, and a national bank. 

Of this new party Seward was the candidate for 
governor in 1834. He failed of an election, and 
returning to Auburn resumed the practice of the 
law. His four years in the state Senate had 
strengthened him in every way; the life had en- 
larged his horizon; the constant intercourse with 
men of more experience than himself, and discus- 
sions in public and private, had developed him; 
his position as a judge not merely gave him the 
opportunity to hear, but required him to listen to 
and to weigh the arguments of all the leading law- 
yers of the State; and this legal work was on a 
higher plane than his previous practice at the bar. 
His absence had rather improved than injured his 
standing as a lawyer; he was at once full of busi- 
ness, and was soon overworked. The summer of 
1835 he spent in traveling for the benefit of his 
wife's health. 

In June, 1836, he became the agent of some 
gentlemen who had purchased of the Holland Com- 
pany its lands in Chautauqua County, in the ex- 
treme southwest of the State of New York. The 
settlers on these lands were to pay for them by 
installments, and only received their deeds when 
the final payments were made. The gentlemen for 
whom Seward was acting bought the rights of the 
Holland Company in these lands, and then got 
into difiiculties with the settlers, who were refusing 
to pay and were fast becoming disorderly and 



20 WILLIAM HENKY SEWARD 

dangerous. To deal with them required both firm- 
ness and forbearance, good sense, tact, kindness 
of heart and manner, and an evident disposition to 
do exact justice. The work necessitated a more or 
less prolonged residence in the county, and was 
Seward's most engrossing occupation until his 
nomination and election as governor by the Whigs 
of New York, in the autumn of 1838. 



CHAPTER II 
GOVERNOK OF NEW YORK 

The Chautauqua affairs had been so far settled 
in the previous year that the financial crisis of 
1837 had not seriously affected them, and when 
he entered upon his duties as governor, Seward 
thought himself free from all personal and busi- 
ness anxieties. 

His election meant a revolution in New York 
politics. For forty years there had been no gov- 
ernor who was not a Democrat; but though the 
Whigs had now carried the State, the Senate 
was still Democratic, and could control both the 
legislation and appointments to office. It was not 
till 1840 that Seward's own party had command, 
and in the last year of his second term (1842) he 
was again confronted by a hostile, not to say 
vindictive, majority in both branches of the 
legislature. 

During his four years as governor, the State 
spent many millions in public improvements. The 
Erie Canal was enlarged, new canals were built, 
and state aid was given to railways and other 
similar enterprises. For only a small part of this 
legislation were the Whigs really responsible. 



22 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

Most of it they received as an inheritance from 
their Democratic predecessors.^ 

The Erie Canal was De Witt Clinton's scheme, 
and its success, from the outset, was so overwhelm- 
ing that it is not strange that it gave rise to all 
sorts of similar schemes, of varying merit and de- 
merit. Seward was an ardent, perhaps an indis- 
criminate advocate of all these. He believed in 
internal improvements, in constructing either by 
the State itself, or with the aid of the State, all 
manner of ways of communication by land and by 
water, railways and canals, from north to south, 
from east to west, between tide-water and the 
lakes, through the great valleys of central New 
York, to the coal and iron fields within and on 
her borders. Some of the works which he favored 

1 Seward says that of the state debt of $30,000,000, in 1844, all 
but about §4,000,000 originated under Democratic administrations 
( Works, iii. p. 305) ; and Hammond, the historian of New York, 
and a Democrat, admits that most of the debt was contracted and 
sanctioned by Democratic legislatures and governors ; though he 
explains that they were forced to do this in order to keep their 
power, as the people were so eager for public works that they 
would have brought in the Whigs, had the Democracy shown any 
faltering in promoting them. In a letter of January 30, 1844, 
Seward writes : " With unimportant exceptions every one of these 
contracts was made by the statesmen who now disavow and dis- 
own them. . . . The same statesmen who now denounce these 
works (the enlargement of the Erie Canal and the New York and 
Erie Railroad) are the same persons who called the latter enter- 
prise into existence by a loan of $3,000,000. An intervening ad- 
ministration [his own] added no new enterprise, and only executed 
the contracts which it found in existence." — Works, iii. pp. 392, 
393. 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK 23 

may have been premature ; he may have crowded 
and hurried them more than the finances of the 
State would warrant; some may not have been in 
themselves good paying investments ; but the pol- 
icy which inaugurated and fostered them was 
broad and far-sighted, and they one and all have 
enabled the State to reap the full benefit of its 
admirable geographical situation, and have helped 
to make the city of New York the seaboard me- 
tropolis of the New "World. 

The necessity of public education in a commu- 
nity governed by universal suffrage was a cardinal 
article of Seward's political faith, and he was ear- 
nest in season and out of season in his endeavors 
to extend and develop the school system of New 
York. He saw the reluctance of the Roman Cath- 
olics to send their children to public schools not 
under their own control and where the peculiar 
tenets of their faith were not taught. For this 
and other reasons, he advocated the substitution 
of new school boards in the city of New York in 
the place of the close corporation, the " Committee 
of Public Instruction," a body exclusively Protes- 
tant, which had the entire control of its schools 
and school funds. He also earnestly recommended 
that sectarian or parochial schools should receive 
a share of the public money devoted to educational 
purposes. His support of the first of these mea- 
sures drew upon him the hostility of many of his 
party in New York city ; while his repeated recom- 
mendations of the latter policy alienated large 



24 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

bodies of Protestant voters. His suggestions of 
changes in legal procedure and practice, to lessen 
the delays and diminish the expense of litigation, 
were not favorably received by the bench or bar; 
and the opposition to him upon these various 
grounds, to say nothing of the hostility of the dis- 
appointed office-holders and their friends, caused 
the reduction of his personal majority in 1840, 
and contributed, with other national and more 
general causes, to the total overthrow of the Whig 
party in New York in the autumn of 1842. 

During his public service as governor, the chari- 
ties of the State found in him a warm friend ; and 
its first lunatic asylum almost owed to him its ex- 
istence. The records of his pardon papers, so far 
as they have been printed, are a most honorable 
testimony, not merely to the humanity and good 
sense which he brought to bear on each particular 
case, but to the sound principles which governed 
him in the exercise of this high prerogative, and 
which are so often neglected for the less creditable 
reasons of importunity and influence. 

In the distribution of offices he simply followed 
the then well-established New York custom. From 
the beginning of the century, "the cohesive power 
of public plunder" had been the strongest bond of 
union among the members of the different factions 
who followed the banner of one or the other of the 
political leaders; and long before it was formu- 
lated as a political axiom, it was the well-settled 
rule of every party and faction in the State, that 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK 25 

"to the victors belong the spoils." Fifty years of 
added experience may enable us to criticise and 
repudiate this doctrine, from whose disastrous 
consequences we suffer daily in nearly every de- 
partment of our administration, from that of the 
humblest messenger in our smallest municipalities 
to the most important posts in our national govern- 
ment. But a half century ago "civil service re- 
form " would have been an incomprehensible 
phrase, not merely to the politicians but to the 
people, and Seward was in this respect no wiser 
than his generation. He expected from those 
whom he appointed to office absolute and unques- 
tioning support. When a lawyer, whom he had 
nominated as judge, appeared before a legislative 
committee to oppose a change in the management 
of the public schools, recommended by the state 
superintendent of education, Seward withdrew the 
nomination. The unsatisfactory nature of the 
spoils system did not fail, however, to impress it- 
self upon him. He says in a letter: "The list of 
appointments made this winter is fourteen hun- 
dred, for all of which I am of course responsible, 
while in many, if not most, instances the circum- 
stances under which the nominations were made 
left me without freedom of election. ... I am 
not surprised by any manifestation of disappoint- 
ment or dissatisfaction. This only I claim, that 
no interest, passion, prejudice or partiality of 
my own has controlled any decision that I have 
made." 



26 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

His courage and good temper in the trying years 
when he was confronted with a legislature where 
his political opponents were in a majority in either 
one or both branches were admirable. He never 
flinched or lost his seK-control before their petty 
insults or their grosser provocations, but bore 
them with perfect apparent equanimity, repelling 
with vigor, when necessary, the attacks made on 
him, but never forgetting his personal self-respect 
or the dignity of his position. 

His official action in two matters, which came 
before him as governor, excited a good deal of 
public feeling and discussion. The first of these 
had its origin in the Canadian rebellion of 1837. 
There was in that year an insurrection in Upper 
Canada, in which the Canadian ringleaders were 
largely assisted by reckless adventurers from north- 
ern New York, a party of whom seized Navy Is- 
land, in the Niagara River, intrenched themselves 
there, and manned their works with cannon stolen 
from the New York state arsenals. A little steam- 
boat, the Caroline, had been engaged to bring 
them supplies. At the end of her first day's em- 
ployment she was made fast to a wharf on the 
American side of the river, and within the limits 
of the State of New York. Here about midnight 
she was boarded by a band of loyal Canadians, set 
on fire, cut loose and left to drift over the falls. 
There was no resistance. The men on the steamer 
were asleep and unarmed. Some of them, awak- 
ened by the attack, jumped ashore; others were 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK 27 

drowned. One of the crew, Durfee, an American, 
was shot and killed as he was running away. 

When the news of this affair reached Washing- 
ton, the secretary of state, Mr. Forsyth, wrote to 
the British minister, complaining of the violation 
of our territory, and saying that it would form the 
subject of a demand for redress. In his reply the 
British minister offered as an excuse for the attack 
the "piratical character of the Caroline, and the 
necessity of self-defense and self-preservation under 
which Her Majesty's subjects acted in destroying 
her ; the temporary overthrow of the ordinary laws 
by piratical violence on the New York frontier; 
and the fact that Her Majesty's subjects in Upper 
Canada, having already severely suffered from this 
cause and being threatened with still farther in- 
jury, . . . were necessarily impelled to consult 
their own security by pursuing and destroying the 
vessel wherever they might find her." 

After this dispatch, which treated the matter as 
an act of private violence with extenuating circum- 
stances, nothing more was heard on the subject 
from the British government for three years, ex- 
cept the acknowledgment of our formal demand 
for an apology and redress. "British interests," 
says an English historian, "had apparently been 
secured by the burning of the Caroline, and the 
natural susceptibilities of the inhabitants of the 
United States seemed hardly worth consideration." 

In November, 1840, Alexander McLeod, a Cana- 
dian, while at Lockport in New York, boasted that 



28 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

he had been one of the party attacking the Caro- 
line, and had himself shot Durfee. He was there- 
upon arrested on a charge of murder and arson. 

On learning of his arrest, the British minister, 
Mr. Fox, who had previously treated the affair as 
the unauthorized act of private individuals, and 
rested his justification of it upon the necessity of 
self-preservation, which had impelled the Cana- 
dians for their own security to pursue and destroy 
the steamer wherever she might be, at once took 
the opposite ground, and demanded McLeod's im- 
mediate release; because the "destruction of this 
steamboat was a public act of persons in Her Ma- 
jesty's service, obeying the orders of their superior 
authorities." This was the first official suggestion 
that the attack on the steamer was the act of the 
government ; and in making it, Mr. Fox was speak- 
ing without authority. Forsyth rejilied that the 
matter was now in the hands of the judiciary of 
New York, and beyond the President's control. 
In February, 1841, Lord Palmerston, then secre- 
tary of state for foreign affairs, wrote to Mr. Fox, 
approving his course, and saying: "There was 
never a matter upon which all parties, Tory, Whig 
and Radical, more entirely agreed. If any harm 
should be done to McLeod, the indignation and 
resentment of all England will be extreme; the 
British nation will never permit a British subject 
to be dealt with as the people of New York pro- 
pose to deal with McLeod, without taking signal 
revenge upon the offenders; McLeod's execution 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK 29 

would produce war, war immediate and frightful 
in its character, because it would be a war of re- 
taliation and vengeance." In this dispatch Lord 
Palmerston assumed on behaK of Great Britain 
full responsibility for the original attack. On the 
12th of March, 1841, the British minister commu- 
nicated the substance of this letter to Mr. Web- 
ster, who, on the change of administration, had 
become secretary of state under President Harri- 
son; and our government then had for the first 
time an authoritative declaration that the violation 
of our territory, the killing of Durfee, and the 
destruction of the steamer, with the incidental loss 
of life, were acts done under orders of the Ca- 
nadian authorities, which England justified and 
assumed as her own. In the opinion of the ad- 
ministration this declaration entirely changed the 
situation, and the transaction became a national 
affair. Webster's reply to Fox was delayed in 
consequence of Harrison's death. ^ Before sending 
it he had learned from Cass, who was in Paris, 
that while McLeod's execution would be consid- 
ered a casus belli, any sentence short of this would 
not have that effect. This information, however, 
did not diminish his eagerness to dispose of the 
matter at once, and he advised the President to 
send the attorney -general to confer with Governor 
Seward upon the new aspect given to the affair by 
this letter, and to urge him to direct the prosecu- 
tion to be discontinued, and McLeod discharged. 

1 He died April 4, 1841, after ten days' illness. 



30 WILLIAM HENRY SEWAKD 

Seward doubted his authority to interfere with the 
case as suggested; and in view of the popular ex- 
citement thought that such interference, if lawful, 
would be extremely injudicious. He was confident 
that the people would acquiesce in McLeod's ac- 
quittal, or in his pardon, if convicted, but would 
be very much stirred up if he were released in the 
exceptional manner proposed. For these reasons 
he declined to accede to the President's sugges- 
tions ; though he assured the attorney-general that 
he would pardon McLeod if he were convicted, and 
that there should be no execution and no war. 
This did not satisfy Mr. Webster, and in reply to 
Palmerston's dispatch he suggested that McLeod 
should apply to the court for a discharge on habeas 
corpus. This was done. The federal administra- 
tion, against Seward's earnest remonstrances, per- 
mitted the United States attorney, who before his 
appointment had been McLeod's counsel, to con- 
tinue to act for him ; the attorney-general of New 
York appeared officially on the other side, and the 
proceedings in court assimied in this way the as- 
pect of a controversy between the federal govern- 
ment on one side, and the state government on the 
other, and were generally so regarded. 

As McLeod's application for his discharge was 
to be heard in the city of New York, he was 
taken there in custody. The legislature was in 
session when he passed through Albany. There 
was much excitement, and an outcry that, by collu- 
sion between the governor and the United States 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK 31 

authorities, McLeod was to be discharged without 
a trial. A resolve was passed calling for all the 
documents and correspondence relating to the case. 
The production of the papers and Seward's accom- 
panying message showed the charge of collusion 
to be absolutely groundless. The discharge was 
refused by the court. McLeod was tried in Oc- 
tober, and acquitted on proof of an alibi. ^ 

Seward in this matter was upholding, as was his 
official duty, the sovereignty of the State of New 
York. Webster's contention was that, after Great 
Britain's admission of her responsibility, the case 
should be at once ended and McLeod released, 
either by an order of the executive discontinuing 
the prosecution, or by a judgment of the court, 
discharging him. 

^ The comments of the newspaper press on the court's refusal 
to discharge McLeod disclosed a distinct difference between the 
Whigs of the city of New York and those beyond the Harlem 
River. Out of the city opinion was unanimously with the court ; 
but in New York itself nearly as unanimously against it. The 
question was treated as an issue between the State of New York, 
her courts and governor on the one side, and on the other the 
federal administration, represented by Mr. Webster with his domi- 
nating personality, and supported by the whole weight and autho- 
rity of the United States. 

The public questions raised in this case were novel ; and though 
later writers on international law have supported Mr. Webster's 
positions, yet at the time so eminent a jurist as Lord Lyndhurst 
was of opinion that " it was very questionable if the Americans 
had not right on their side," and that " in a similar case in Eng- 
land they would be obliged to try the man, and, if convicted, no- 
thing but a pardon could save him." — Dana's Wheaton, p. 371 ; 
Greville's Journal, Part II. vol. i. p. 383. 



32 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

The New York court decided that, as peace ex- 
isted between Great Britain and the United States, 
at the time of the burning of the Caroline, and 
McLeod was merely a private citizen, holding no 
commission and acting under no previous au- 
thority, and as no responsibility for his act was 
assumed by his government until after he had been 
arrested and the court had acquired jurisdiction 
of the case, its jurisdiction was not ousted by the 
subsequent admission of his government, and that 
the case must therefore proceed in the regular way. 

What had been done in New York after Mc- 
Leod 's arrest had been originally approved by Van 
Buren's administration, and Seward felt keenly 
the treatment he received at the hands of its suc- 
cessors, the representatives of his own party. 
Writing to a friend before the trial, he says: 
"Nothing could have been more unkind or unwise 
than the course pursued towards me by the general 
government in the McLeod affair. It was not 
merely unkind, it was ungenerous. They enjoyed 
my full confidence, they showed me none. I was 
left to learn the ground taken by the administra- 
tion from the published documents accompanying 
the President's message. ... It has been some- 
what oppressive upon me personally to have Mr. 
Webster roll over upon us the weight of his great 
name and fame to smother me." 

The matter created a good deal of feeling on 
both sides. If Seward was offended at his treat- 
ment by the administration, the President and Mr. 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK 33 

Webster were personally irritated both by his re- 
fusal to intervene, and by the failure of the attempt 
to obtain McLeod's immediate discharge by the 
court. There were also public grounds on which 
Mr. "Webster wished to dispose of the affair of the 
Caroline as speedily and quietly as possible, and 
it annoyed him that the governor of New York 
would not yield to his judgment and cooperate in 
carrying out his wishes. 

Before the case was finally disposed of, there 
was a change of government in England, and 
shortly afterwards Lord Ashburton was dispatched 
as a special envoy to this country to settle various 
matters in dispute. Among these was the affair of 
the Caroline. But with the discharge of McLeod, 
Great Britain relapsed into the same indifference 
as before his arrest, and it was with difficulty that 
Mr. Webster obtained from Lord Ashburton a 
statement that "it was perhaps most to be regretted 
that some explanation and apology for this occur- 
rence was not immediately made." This doubtful 
expression of regret, and careful avoidance of an 
apology, our government accepted as sufficient 
amends for the invasion of our territory and the 
killing of our citizens. It was not a triumph of 
American diplomacy, and the result quite justified 
Lord Palmerston's boast, that "there was no apo- 
logy for the Caroline and should be none." 

It is uncertain whether Seward had at any time 
an expectation of going into Harrison's cabinet, 
or any reason for such an expectation. A letter 



34 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

from Harrison to Webster, printed in "Webster's 
Life and Correspondence," perhaps indicates that 
Webster had dissuaded Harrison from considering 
Seward for any cabinet appointment, and that 
Harrison had listened to his advice. After thank- 
ing him for suggestions upon this matter, Harri- 
son writes: "I tell you, however, in confidence, 
that I have positively determined against S. There 
is no consideration which would induce me to bring 
him into the cabinet. We should have no peace 
with his intriguing, restless disposition." It would 
have been more useful, as well as more interesting, 
if Mr. Webster's biographer had either suppressed 
both letters, or published the one to which this is 
a reply. It is difficult to see who the mysterious 
"S" could have been except Seward. If he were 
the person named, it is evident that Webster had, 
before he went into Harrison's cabinet, an opinion 
of Seward by no means favorable, which may 
partly account for the tone assumed by him in the 
matter of McLeod. If one considers also that the 
McLeod matter came up after a controversy with 
Virginia, to be spoken of presently, had been 
going on for two years, that President Tyler was 
first and always a Virginian, and that his personal 
animosity to Seward at that time and down to the 
day of his death appears everywhere in his biogra- 
phy, it is possible that there is to be found here 
an additional explanation of the arrogant and of- 
fensive treatment which Seward received at this 
time at the hands of the administration, and how 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK 35 

it happened that, while he gave them his entire 
confidence, he was left to learn their plans and 
policy from the newspapers and public documents. 

A controversy with Virginia, growing out of a 
demand for the surrender of persons charged with 
aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave, involved 
Seward in a long and unpleasant correspondence 
with the governor of that State, gained him noto- 
riety and odium in the South, a prominent position 
among the advanced anti-slavery Whigs at the 
North, and induced the Abolitionists to endeavor 
to persuade him to join their ranks and accept 
their nomination for president. He preferred, 
however, to remain a Whig, believing, as he al- 
ways insisted, that there could be only two great 
parties in the country, and that a third party 
could never accomplish, except indirectly, any 
important end. 

The facts of the case were simple enough, and 
the statement of them is all that is needed for 
Seward's justification. As he was leaving Albany 
for a few days' absence an agent of Virginia ap- 
peared with a requisition for two colored men, 
charged with stealing a slave. They had been 
already arrested and were in jail in New York. 
Seward examined the affidavit on which the appli- 
cation was founded, pointed out to the agent what 
he considered its fatal defects, informed him that 
he should hear the men before answering the re- 
quisition, and that he would attend to the matter 
on his return. Nothing more was heard from the 



36 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

agent; but a month later, on receiving a letter on 
the subject from the acting governor of Virginia, 
Seward ascertained by an official report that the 
men had been discharged on habeas corpus, be- 
cause the judge before whom they were brought 
was satisfied upon the evidence that "neither of 
them had committed an offense against the laws of 
Virginia." A courteous note inclosing this report 
would seem to have been the dignified and proper 
reply to the letter from Virginia; but instead of 
confining himself to this, Seward voluntarily em- 
barked in a discussion of the proper construction 
of the constitutional provision for the surrender of 
fugitives from justice, insisting that it applied 
only to offenses recognized as crimes by the juris- 
prudence of all civilized nations, or to acts made 
criminal by the laws both of the State demanding 
and of that assenting to the surrender, and did not 
apply to acts which any one State chose to make 
highly penal, but which had no criminal signifi- 
cance in the other, such as assisting in the escape 
of a slave, — an act inspired by the spirit of hu- 
manity and of the Christian religion. 

This letter gave great offense to the authorities 
and people of Virginia; it was considered an in- 
sult to the State, a wanton attack on the peculiar 
institution upon which its whole social fabric rested. 
The correspondence was continued through more 
than two years, Seward's letters alone covering sev- 
enty printed octavo pages. Virginia sent copies 
of the correspondence to the other slave States 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK 37 

and asked their support; the matter was laid be- 
fore her legislature, and a committee of that body- 
made an elaborate report upon it. Her governor 
refused to surrender to New York a fugitive 
charged with forgery; and when the legislature 
disapproved his action, he resigned. The lieuten- 
ant-governor returned the alleged forger; but the 
Virginia legislature, by way of retaliation for 
Seward's conduct, passed a law imposing special 
burdens upon vessels coming from or bound to New 
York; authorizing the governor, however, to sus- 
pend its operation, whenever New York should 
repeal its statute giving alleged fugitive slaves the 
right of trial by jury, and should either return 
the colored seamen originally demanded, or show 
a proper penitence and recant its constitutional 
heresies. 

The friends of each governor approved his course, 
and praised his superior skill in the discussion. 
All Virginians, of whatever party, thought the 
"attitude, conduct and ability of Governor Gilmer 
was in every way a match for the wily arts of 
Seward." But New York was by no means so 
unanimous in its support of its chief magistrate. 
"The controversy has hitherto been much more 
ably managed by Seward than by the Virginians," 
writes John Quincy Adams, in his diary, "but 
there have been symptoms of the basest defection 
to the cause of freedom among the New York 
Whigs, and a disposition to sacrifice Seward to 
the South." There is no question that, at the 



38 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

time, this correspondence injured Seward with his 
own party. The Democratic opinion of his posi- 
tion was expressed in a joint resohition of the New 
York legislature, declaring that "stealing a slave, 
contrary to the laws of Virginia, is a crime, within 
the meaning of the constitution," and requesting 
the governor to transmit to the executive of Vir- 
ginia a copy of this resolve. Seward returned the 
resolution with a message in which he said : — 

"I could not transmit the resolution in the pre- 
sent case, without silently acquiescing therein, and 
thus waiving a decision to which I adhere, or ac- 
companying the communication to Virginia with 
a protest of my dissent. The Senate and Assem- 
bly will, therefore, excuse me from assuming the 
duty which an assent to their request would im- 
pose, and will, if it be proper, select some other 
organ of communication with the executive author- 
ities of our sister commonwealth." 

This message was his last important communica- 
tion to the legislature, his official career in New 
York ending with the year. 



CHAPTER III 

PROFESSIONAL LIFE — SIX TEAKS A PRIVATE 
CITIZEN 

When Seward returned to Auburn in January, 
1843, he had some reason for thinking that his 
public career was closed. The political condition 
and outlook of the Whig party in the country were 
most unpromising. They had elected their presi- 
dent and vice-president, but the former had died, 
and the latter vetoed every measure intended to 
carry out their policy. In New York the Demo- 
crats had again obtained entire control of the state 
government, and for this many Whigs held Sew- 
ard's administration responsible. He was blamed 
for the state debt, though Democratic legislation 
had created it; his Virginia correspondence had 
alienated conservatives; his course in the McLeod 
matter had incurred the hostility of Webster's 
friends; and his views about the distribution of 
the school funds had given much dissatisfaction to 
Protestants. It seemed, therefore, not only that 
there was no prospect of success for his party, but 
that, even should they unexpectedly carry an elec- 
tion, there was no probability that any public ser- 
vice would be required of him. It was perhaps 



40 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

best for him that he felt that his public career 
was closed, for the condition of his own affairs was 
such as to require all his attention, and he was 
glad to think that he was still young enough to 
"repair all the waste of his private fortune." 
During his term as governor he had entirely neg- 
lected his own business matters, and had spent 
more than his income ; his moderate personal estate 
had been nearly consumed, and he now found him- 
self so embarrassed that he was advised to seek the 
benefit of the bankrupt act. But this he refused 
even to consider, and opening his old office set him- 
self to work to earn his living and pay his debts. 

Resuming his practice with a local action of the 
most trifling character, the circle of his clients 
continually widened and his cases increased both 
in number and importance; he became counsel for 
the owners of several valuable patents, and in a 
few years was able to write to his wife : " Every 
day since my retreat from public life, the profes- 
sion which I once so ungratefully desj)ised has 
been increasing its rewards, until we are no longer 
pressed by fear of disaster or sickness, although 
I have been diverted so often and so long from 
lucrative engagements. Our boys are pleasantly 
obtaining an education which is a better patrimony 
than riches. If our comforts do not decrease, and 
our children have no reason to complain of neglect, 
we shall have passed through life hapjiier, and I 
hope die better, than we should if my earliest 
schemes of wealth had been accomplished." 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 41 

One trial In which he took part at this time 
should certainly be mentioned, as Seward's con- 
duct in it exhibited some of the best qualities of 
his character, — the courage and tenacity with 
which he pursued, in spite of threats and obloquy, 
a course which his conviction of right and his 
sense of humanity dictated. A demented negro 
named Freeman, just out of the state prison at 
Auburn, killed, without the slightest provocation 
and with revolting brutality, a whole family of 
the neighborhood. He was arrested. The people, 
roused to a pitch of frenzy, were with difficulty 
restrained from lynching him. Seward was away 
at the time. He had recently been counsel in 
another case where the then novel and unpopular 
defense of insanity had been set up and maintained 
by him with some success; and it was feared he 
might be induced to act for Freeman. Every 
effort was made to prevent this. To quiet the 
popular apprehensions on this point, one of the 
county judges publicly declared that no Governor 
Seward would interfere to defend Freeman; and 
Seward's own law partners were persuaded to con- 
firm this assurance, while threats of personal vio- 
lence, should he appear for the defense, were freely 
made. Seward, on his return, was present in 
court when the poor lunatic was brought in to 
be arraigned; he had no counsel; and thereupon, 
finding no other lawyer willing to defend him, 
Seward, though he had full knowledge of the popu- 
lar feeling and of all that had been said and done 



42 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

as to his appearance in this case, the threats as 
well as the promises, volunteered to act for him. 
It is not necessary to repeat the story of the trial. 
It was a most painful mockery of justice, equally 
discreditable to the judge, the prosecuting counsel 
and the jury. Seward was uniformly treated by 
them all during its progress as a person who was 
prostituting his great talents in a wicked attempt 
to save by unlawful means the worst of criminals. 
But he was apparently unmoved by all this. He 
bore with seeming composure the taunts and abuse 
of the prosecuting attorney, the ill manners and 
injustice of the court, and the gibes and insults of 
the people. The arduous and painful professional 
duty he had undertaken was most faithfully dis- 
charged. His closing argument was exhaustive 
and convincing. The insanity of Freeman was 
proved beyond a doubt. But conviction was a 
foregone conclusion. The public excitement had 
made a fair trial and verdict a matter of difficulty. 
The presiding judge did not hesitate to show that 
he shared the feelings of the people, and his obvi- 
ous leaning against the prisoner and his defense 
made any unbiased consideration of the case by a 
jury altogether impossible. A higher court, less 
subject to local pressure and the temporary popu- 
lar frenzy, set aside the verdict on Seward's appli- 
cation, and ordered a new trial; but before that 
could take place the poor fellow's mania had so 
developed that it was impossible to try him again. 
He lived only a short time, and the examination 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE ^ 43 

which followed his death, djscloeedi an forganie dis- 
ease of the brain, from which he had- long .been 
suffering. , .. . ■ .;: ,'t . : , . ; 

For his conduct in this case,i Seward r was at the 
time to some extent, proscribed^ "I .rise .from 
these fruitless labors," ,he wrote, ."exhausted in 
mind and in body, -co vered with public reproach, 
stunned with protests." .^Frepman'^' death, how- 
ever, and the clear proojE of his insanity, caused ^a 
revulsion of popular, feeling; and, in the, end, and 
perhaps especially with th9se,who. had,, been loud- 
est in their denunciatiQns of bjm, his defense of 
Freeman brought him far more (gain, .than. loss,,. of 
reputation. ; , , , ,,,. ), , ,, , 

Though he was not again a. candidate ifqr office 
until his election to the United States Senate, in 
1849, declining in the interval every suggestion , of 
a nomination, yet h,e was.fleyer so. tabsarbed by. his 
professional labors ., as to cease to.take an interest 
in politics. Eithei;, from his Qwn choice, or bp^- 
cause he was out of .fayWjwith his. party,,! he gave 
little time to public affairs in the year 1848. , But 
in the presidential campaign; of 1844 he, did hi^ 
utmost to insure the. success of the W-higs. i . He 
began on the 22d of February, with, a speech, at 
Auburn in favor of Clay, who jvas then recognized 
as the Whig candidate,,;thpngh . it was not till 
May that the convention ratified,,by a fo?;mal vote^ 
the nomination already .made by the, people. ,,,Jn 
this election there was but one.;peal issue, the , aur 
nexation of Texas. Though this had been va^guely 



U WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

threatened for some time, no scheme for effecting 
it had taken any definite shape until that which 
Tyler had sprung upon the country, only a few 
weeks before the nominating conventions of the 
different parties were to be held. 

Adventurers from the Southern States had 
wrested Texas from Mexico, not to make it an in- 
dependent reiDublic, but to secure its annexation 
to the United States and an extension of the area 
of slavery. There were many intrigues and secret 
negotiations for this purpose during the earlier 
years of Tyler's administration, and even before 
that time; but no decisive step was taken until 
Calhoun became secretary of state in March, 1844, 
when he at once negotiated a treaty of annexation, 
which the Senate rejected by a considerable major- 
ity. While it was under consideration, both the 
great parties held their conventions. The platform 
of the Whigs was silent as to Texas and slavery, 
though Clay had declared himself opposed to an- 
nexation. The Democrats abandoned Van Buren, 
who had been their most prominent candidate, be- 
cause he was known to be against annexation; they 
nominated James K. Polk of Tennessee, and de- 
clared "the re-annexation of Texas a great Ameri- 
can measure recommended to the cordial support 
of the Democracy of the Union." The Liberty 
party had met the year before and nominated 
James G. Birney, with a platform of twenty-one 
resolutions all aimed at the slave system of the 
South. 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 45 

During the summer, as the canvass went on, it 
became evident that the election was to depend on 
the vote of New York. Whichever of the great 
parties could carry that State would elect its can- 
didate. The Whigs might reasonably hope to do 
this, if they could hold the radical anti-slavery 
members of their party, and induce them to sup- 
port the regular nominations instead of throwing 
away their votes on Birney. Seward's advanced 
anti-slavery opinions, and his unhesitating adher- 
ence to the Whig party and its candidates, made 
him a most efficient worker with men of this de- 
scription, who were opposed to the admission of 
Texas, who meant to resist it by their votes, and 
wished to do so in the most effectual manner; and 
he spent three months in campaign labors in the 
strongholds of anti-slavery opinion in northern 
and western New York. His speeches and letters 
were of necessity much alike in substance, how- 
ever they might differ in form. The following 
passages give an outline of his principal arguments 
for the support of the Whig candidates : — 

"The annexation of Texas is identical with the 
perpetuation of slavery. Our opponents are for 
it. The Whig party are against it. If there is 
a friend of human freedom willing to follow my 
lead in this sacred cause, I appeal to him to give 
his suffrage to the Whig candidates, not for the 
sake of Henry Clay, nor even for the sake of the 
Whig party, but for our country, for liberty's 
sake, and for the sake of humanity." 



46 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

"What will Texas cost? It will cost a war 
with Mexico, an unjust war — a war to extend the 
slave trade. You will not go to war for hiunan 
slavery, wiE you ? You say Henry Clay is a slave- 
holder. So he is. I regret it as deeply as you 
do; I Avish it 'were otherwise. ' But our conflict is 
not with one slaveholder, or with many, but with 
slavery. You are opposed ' to the admission of 
Texas'; Will you resist it b^ voting for James G. 
Birney? Your votes would be just as effectual if 
cast upon the' waters of the placid lake." 

'"Henry Glay rs opposed to the coming in of 
Texas. He is the candidate of the Whig party. 
They ai-e opposed to the coming in of Texas. The 
stecurity, the duration, the extension of slavery, 
all depend' on the annexation of Texas. How, 
then, lean any friend of emancipation vote for the 
Texas ^ candidate, or withhold his vote from the 
Whig candidate? V ■ 

"Th^ integi'ity of -the Union depends on the 
result. To increase the slaveholding power is to 
subvert the Oonstitutiori, to ^ve [this power] a 
fearful preponderance, which probably will be 
speedily followed by demands to which the Demo- 
cratic ft-ee-labor States cannot yield, and which 
will b© inade the ground for secession, nullification, 
and distinidn.'' ' ' 

Before the convention rii'dt in May, Mr. Clay 
had writtein a letter in which he deprecated either 
ui^gitrg or opp/osing annexation ofi sectional grounds, 
declared an acq^uisitionof tierritbry for the purpose 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 47 

of strengthening one portion of the country against 
the other to be a scheme pregnant with evil, and 
insisted that annexation and a war with Mexico 
were identical, and that such a measure at that time 
would be dangerous to the integrity of the Union. 
It was upon this letter that he was nominated and 
that the Northern Whigs were asked to accept his 
position on the Texas question as satisfactory. 
But in August, yielding to the pressure of South- 
ern Whigs in States which he could not possibly 
carry. Clay wrote a second letter, saying: "So 
far from having any personal objection to the an- 
nexation of Texas, I should be glad to see it, with- 
out dishonor, without war, with the common con- 
sent of the Union, and upon just and fair terms." 
The news of this last letter reached Seward while 
he was canvassing New York on Clay's behalf; its 
effect was immediately apparent : " I met that let- 
ter at Geneva," he writes, "and thence here, and 
until now, everybody droops, despairs. It jeop- 
ards, perhaps loses the State. Is there any other 
way but to go through to the end more devotedly 
than ever?" 

He followed the course he here suggests, finish- 
ing his campaign labors with no apparent lack of 
zeal or courage, but with an inward conviction of 
the coming defeat. His exertions, however, brought 
him one satisfaction, the restoration to some extent 
of the former harmonious relations between the 
conservative Whigs of the city of New York and 
himself. The causes of this were twofold. The 



48 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

mass of the Whigs had moved forward to where 
Seward stood, and even the laggards had advanced 
much nearer his position; while the more intelli- 
gent of his opponents in his own party were be- 
coming aware of the fact, that whatever were his 
hopes or beliefs as to the perfect republic, he en- 
deavored to consider and deal with actual public 
affairs as a practical statesman rather than as a 
Utopian doctrinaire, and would not knowingly sacri- 
fice a possible present gain to a remote and uncer- 
tain ideal. 

At the close of the campaign he resumed his 
professional labors, and remained until the next 
presidential election a simple looker-on in politics, 
even declining a nomination to the constitutional 
convention of his own State. 

Detained by professional business at Washing- 
ton during several weeks in each of the next three 
winters, he heard there much talk as to the polit- 
ical questions of the day, — the matter of the 
Oregon boundary, which was in dispute between 
this country and Great Britain, the Mexican 
war and the Wilmot Proviso. But he listened, 
perhaps, to more speculations as to the possible 
and probable candidates for the next election, 
and by March, 1847, he felt that General Tay- 
lor's nomination and election scarcely admitted 
of a doubt. "I am not prepared to speculate," 
he writes, "upon the consequences of events so 
great and unlooked for as these. What will be 
their effect upon the ' Great Question of Ques- 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 49 

tions, ' which underlies all present political move- 
ments?" 

When the nomination was actually made, he 
accepted it as a "result inevitable, if not the best 
left within our power to attain," and took comfort 
in thinking that, "if the Barnburners continued 
the conflict, they would be able to save the State 
for the Whigs." 

Before the convention took place, Seward's 
name had been suggested for the vice-presidency ; 
but it was immediately stated that he was not a 
candidate. Eillmore, who received the nomina- 
tion, was not the choice of Taylor's supporters, 
but was a concession to his opponents ; and Seward 
at once predicted that, if Fillmore were elected, 
that portion of the Whig party of the State, to 
which he himself belonged, "would be in the posi- 
tion of a faction apparently opposed to the New 
York leader in the general council of the Whigs 
of the Union," — a prophecy partially realized 
during Taylor's life, and thoroughly fulfilled after 
his death. 

Before the Whig convention met. General Cass 
had been nominated by the Democrats; and when 
the new Free Soil party had selected as its candi- 
dates Van Buren and Adams, the political cam- 
paign began. 

In 1848 the Whigs repeated the experiment 
made eight years before. They nominated a mili- 
tary hero, admittedly without political experience, 
and having at the best but a scanty equipment of 



50 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

political linowledge or opinions. Their convention 
had no committee on resolutions, and made no 
declaration of principles. The Democrats pro- 
claimed the war' with Mexicoi "just and neces- 
sary;" and the Free Soilers declared that there 
should be " no more slave States and no more slave 
territory;" but "I'ree Soil, Free Speech, Free 
Labor and Free Men." 

It was soon evident that for a second time the 
election was to depend upon the fortunes of this 
new third party in the pivotal State of New York. 
Would it catch enough anti-slavery AYhig votes to 
give the election there to the Democrats; or could 
Van Buren, by the magic of his name, his personal 
popularity and his political skill, seduce from their 
allegiance so many Democrats as to compass the 
defeat of his old political rival and enemy, Cass? 
Again, the conduct, the position, the presence and 
the labors of Beward, a pronounced anti-slavery 
man, but an equally emphatic Whig, were all-im- 
portant to his party. 

Seward yielded to the numerous demands made 
upon him, arid for six weeks or more spoke con- 
stantly in New York, NeW England, Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, Delaware add Ohio. In Boston he 
and Abraham Lincoln were heard together, and 
at the close of the evening Lincoln said to him: 
"I have been thinking about what you said in 
yiour speech. I reckon you^re right. We have 
got to deal with this slavery <|uestion, and got to 
give much more attention to it hereafter than we 



PRD'FESSIONAL LIFE 51 

liave been doing." ^ ' SeViard's last speeches were 
made to the anti-slavery men of the Western Re- 
serve in Ohio, endeavoring to persuade them to 
cast their votes for Taylor rather than to throw 
them away on Van Buren and thereby assurB the 
ele<^tion 'of Cass,' and the openings to slavery of 
the' Territories just wriihg from Mexico. His 
friends thought his speech at Cleveland the boldest 
and best he had niade,' \(f\iile his opponents charac- 
terized it as the most perverse and dogmatic. ' He 
revised this speech' "for publication, thinking "it 
would comniend itself to consideration." A short 
summary of it will show his views of the issues 
between the p^Vties, and of the duty 6f all Oppo- 
nents of the extension of slavery. ' 

He saw two antagonistical elements 6f Society 
in America, ■—' freedom and slavery. These ele- 
ments divided iahd classified the Aia6rican people 
into tx^o parties. One' ofHheSe, the party' of slav- 
ery, regaMed "disunidn as amoiig the means of 
defense, and not aiWays the last to be efliployed." 
The other maintained that the presertatioii of the 
union of the States, one and inseparable, now and 
forever, was the highest dtity of the American 
people to themselves, to posterity and 'to mankind. 
"The party of slavery," he Said, "declares that 
institution necessary, beneficent, approved of God, 
and "therefore inviolable. The party of freedom 
seeks COffiplfete and universal emancipation. 'I'hese 
two great elements exist and' ar6'' developed ifi the 

" ^ ^ SewarS, ii/e, ii. p. 60. - 



52 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

two great national parties of the land." Seward 
did not contend that an evil spirit had always pos- 
sessed one of these parties without exception or 
mitigation, and that a beneficent one had on all 
occasions fully directed the actions of the other; 
but he insisted that a beneficent one had worked 
chiefly in the Whig party, and its antagonist had 
worked in the other party ; and that the Whig party 
had been as true and faithfid to human freedom as 
the inert conscience of the American people woidd 
permit it to be ; that inert as that conscience was, 
much could be done, everything could be done, for 
freedom. 

"Slavery," he said, "can be limited to its pre- 
sent bounds, it can be ameliorated, it can and 
must be abolished, and you and I can and must 
do it. The task is as simple and easy as its con- 
summation will be beneficent and its rewards glo- 
rious. It requires only to follow this simple rule 
of action, namely, to do everywhere and on every 
occasion what we can, and not to neglect or refuse 
to do what we can at any time, because at that 
precise time and on that particular occasion we 
cannot do more. Circumstances determine possi- 
bilities. When we have done our best to shape 
them and make them propitious, we may rest satis- 
fied that superior wisdom has determined their 
form as they exist, and will be satisfied with us if 
we then do all the good that circumstances leave 
in our power. But we must begin deeper and 
lower than in the composition and combinations of 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 53 

factions and parties. Wherein do the strength 
and security of slavery lie ? You answer that they 
lie in the Constitution of the United States, and 
the constitutions and laws of all slaveholding States. 
Not at all. They lie in the erroneous sentiment 
of the American people. Constitutions and laws 
can no more rise above the virtue of the people 
than the limpid stream can climb above its native 
spring. Inculcate, then, the love of freedom and 
the equal rights of man under the paternal roof; 
see to it that they are taught in the schools and 
in the churches ; extend a cordial welcome to the 
fugitive who lays his weary limbs at your door, 
and defend him as you would your paternal gods ; 
correct your own error, that slavery has any con- 
stitutional guaranty which may not be released 
and ought not to be relinquished. Say to slavery, 
when it shows its bond and demands the pound of 
flesh, that if it draws one drop of blood its life 
shall pay the forfeit. Inculcate that free States 
can maintain the rights of hospitality and human- 
ity; that executive authority can forbear to favor 
slavery; that Congress can debate, that Congress 
can at least mediate with the slaveholding States; 
that at least future generations might be bought 
and given up to freedom. . . . Do all this, and 
inculcate all this in the spirit of moderation and 
benevolence, and not of retaliation and fanaticism, 
and you will soon bring the parties of the country 
into an effective aggression on slavery. When- 
ever the public mind shall will the abolition of 



54 WILLUM . HE^RYi SEWARD 

slavery, the way will open for it. I know that 
you ^ill tell me that all this is too slow. W^ll, 
then, go faster if you can, and I will go with you; 
but . . . remember that no human work is done 
without preparation, that God works out his sub- 
limest purposes among men with preparation." 

If the closing passages of this speech, which 
have just been quoted, did not indicate a new de- 
parture in what Seward considered the political 
aims of the Whig party, they certainly stated these 
aims with clearness and emphasis, and are in 
marked contrast with the absolute silence of its 
platform on the subject of slavery. The mass of 
the anti-slavery Whigs at the North, though op- 
posed to the extension of slavery, were not eman- 
cipationists, and had by no means r reached Sew- 
ard's position as declared in this speech. The 
large majority of them who were not politicians 
voted for Taylor, slaveholder though he was,, on 
the grounds upon which Seward advised it, — .that 
the Whig party was, after all, the party of free- 
dom, and the personal question a subordinate one, 
and that it would be almost impossible to regain 
for freedom what would be lost by, a Democratic 
victory. _. ;_,.r:s^ ,;.-m.-. ,„...-, ....- .- f;' 

Se;ward had no special gifts of voice or presence. 
He was below the average height, with nothing 
commanding in his appearance, and his voice was 
harsh and shrill; but there was a courage, au ear- 
nestness about his campaign speeches of this, year, 
which made them most effective at thq time, and 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 55 

a tone of conviction, whicli still vibrates as one 
reads them after the lapse of nearly half a cen- 
tury. .^ : ^ ::'.'" 

He returned home the night before the elec- 
tion. The next morning it seemed probable that 
the Whigs had carried New York; in a week's 
time Taylor's election was ascertained beyond a 
doubt. ' . ' 

The campaign over, Seward turned again to the 
law, and was busily engaged with his cases. But 
thouffh he wrote on the 16th of November : "Now 
that I have got into the law again pretty deep, I 
care nothing for these [political] intrigues," — yet 
it cannot be doubted that he took a lively interest 
in the canvass for the United States Senate, which 
his friends were making on his behalf, and which 
his opponents in his own party were fighting by 
the publication of anonymous pamplilets'and forged 
letters, and the manufacture of fictitious interviews. 
As often happens in such cases, these inventions 
returned only to plague the inventors, and on the 
6th of February, 1849, Seward was chosen senator 
from New York. He was not at this time forty- 
eight years old. He had never befen in Congress 
or held any office under the Uliited States, yet he 
had been four years in the New York Senate, and 
for an equal time the governor of that State. He 
was familiar with the nlachinery of legislation arid 
the workings of a legislative body, arid with the 
conduct of public affairs. He had been from his 
youth an ardent politiciian, and his ability had 



56 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

been quickly recognized and used by his political 
associates. He was but twenty-three when he 
attacked the Albany Regency, the all powerful 
clique which then ruled New York, and only 
twenty-seven when he was unanimously chosen 
president of a state convention called to promote 
the reelection of John Quincy Adams. The de- 
feat of Mr. Adams was a deathblow to the party 
which supported him, — the National Kepublicans, 
— and Seward joined the anti-Masonic party as the 
most vigorous opponent of Jackson and his follow- 
ers, and by the anti-Masons he was nominated 
and elected to the state Senate in 1830. If at 
the beginning of his four years' service in that 
body he suffered some embarrassment from the 
consciousness of his youth and inexperience, this 
feeling soon disappeared; he rose rapidly in the 
opinion of his fellow senators and of the public, 
and before the end of his term was the recognized 
spokesman of the small minority opposed to the 
Democracy. His speeches there upon national 
questions are especially noteworthy for their bold- 
ness and intellectual vigor; while in matters of 
domestic legislation he was the strenuous supporter 
of all measures which a liberal and enlightened 
policy suggested for the improvement and growth 
of the State or the advancement and welfare of 
the people. At the end of his four years' service 
he was so far a leader in the new party into which 
the opponents of Jackson were endeavoring to 
unite, and which assumed the name "Whig," as 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 57 

to receive its nomination for governor. The party 
was too new to succeed, and though he led his 
ticket in all the counties, Seward failed to be 
elected. 

He now found himself, however, for the first 
time a member of a national party representing 
upon the pressing national issues what had long 
been his own cherished convictions. With the 
principles of the Whig party he was thoroughly 
imbued. He believed in a liberal construction of 
the Constitution, in the protection and development 
of American industries and the policy and duty of 
the government in the promotion of internal im- 
provements, and held generally the liberal views 
of those Whigs who were most radical and pro- 
gressive, and which were in some respects much in 
advance of the time. 

During the four years which intervened before 
his election as governor in 1838, though he took 
no active part in politics, yet he spoke from time 
to time to the people of western New York, insist- 
ing upon the necessity of public education for the 
successful maintenance of republican government, 
and on the importance of internal improvements 
for the development of the State ; and in the finan- 
cial crisis of 1837 he gave wise and timely warn- 
ing of the evil of the government's "pledging its 
credit by issues of ' Continental money ' to pay its 
officers and carry on a war." During these four 
years there was a constantly increasing interest in 
the slavery question, and a marked development 



58 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

of sectional bitterness between the North and the 
South. At the North, abolition societies were 
becoming more prominent and aggressive, and in 
Congress John Quincy Adams was fighting the 
battle of the right of petition ; while in the South, 
the postmasters, with the encouragement and ap- 
proval of the administration, wei'e arbitrarily de- 
stroying the abolition newspapers found in the 
mails, and the President himself was recommend- 
ing and the Southerners insisting upon the passage 
of a law punishing the circulation of such publica- 
tions through the mails in the Southern States. 
Seward saw the dangers of encouraging these de- 
mands, and prophesied that if the South persisted 
in such monstrous claims and conduct the issue 
would be fearfully changed for them. 

Sectional differences, however, played no part 
of importance in either the presidential campaign 
of 1836 or that of 1840, both of which turned upon 
the economic issues which divided the Whigs and 
Democrats; but minor incidents and such events 
as the correspondence between Seward and the 
Southern governors kept alive and tended to in- 
crease the hostile feeling between the two sections, 
which the proposed annexation of Texas threatened 
at any time to kindle into an active flame. 

The campaign of 1840 was practically the last 
presidential election which did not turn on the 
slavery question. From Tyler's accession to power, 
and his veto of every bill passed by Congress to 
carry out the financial policy which he had been 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 59 

elected to support, the questions which, to the mass 
of the Whigs of the North, overshadowed and 
eclipsed all others in importance and interest were 
those of the admission of Texas and the consequent 
extension of slavery, and the compliance with, or 
refusal of, the growing demands of the slaveholders. 
Upon these great questions, in whatever form they 
presented themselves, Seward had from the outset 
held fixed opinions, while other people were hesi- 
tating, and he had never shrunk from expressing 
and acting up to them, regardless of any obloquy 
he might incur. 

In the discussions with the governors of the 
Southern States as to persons charged with aiding 
slaves to escape, in his arguments before the courts 
in defending such cases, and in his political 
speeches, Seward was the recognized exponent of 
the most advanced views as to the slavery question 
of the most advanced Northern Whigs who still 
adhered to their party. 

It would not be true to say of any one man that 
he created the public opinion on the subject of 
slavery which at last found its political expression 
in the Republican party; but it is true of Seward 
that his speeches and arguments at this period in- 
culcated the doctrines and instilled into the voters 
of the free States the principles on which that 
party was built ; and that these speeches were the 
textbook from which large and continually increas- 
ing masses of Northern voters were receiving their 
political education. Of the "Conscience Whigs" 



60 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

in New York lie was the representative man, and 
it was to his pronounced anti-slavery opinions and 
his bold advocacy of them, quite as much as to his 
adherence to the other doctrines of his party, that 
Seward owed his strong hold upon the people of 
New York which caused his election to the Senate 
in the winter of 1849. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 

In the four and a half years between Polk's 
election and Taylor's inauguration, the policy of 
the slave States had become distinctly developed, 
and the political dogmas of their leading statesmen 
clearly formidated. In 1845 they refused to admit 
Iowa, which had a sufficient popidation, unless 
Florida, deficient in numbers, should be brought 
in as a State under the same biU. In 1848 Wis- 
consin came in as a counterpoise to Texas and the 
great acquisitions of the Mexican war, which were 
then expected to inure to the benefit of the South 
and slavery. 

In the closing days of Tyler's administration, a 
joint resolution for the annexation of Texas had 
been passed by the expiring Congress, and received 
the President's signature. Before the middle of 
January, 1846, Polk ordered Taylor to advance 
into Mexico, and our war of invasion began. In 
the following winter, while the war was still in 
progress (February 19, 1847), Calhoun offered in 
the Senate, and supported by an elaborate speech, 
resolutions declaring in substance that slavery was 
national, freedom sectional ; that the Constitution 



62 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

authorized and protected slavery in all the national 
domain, and that neither Congress nor any terri- 
torial legislature could legally prevent a citizen of 
a slave State from migrating with his slaves to 
any Territory and there holding them in servitude. 

During the Mexican war the territory which 
was ceded to us by treaty at its close had been 
occupied by our troops and governed by the officers 
in command of them, who treated the laws of 
Mexico as still in force, so far as the civil rights 
and obligations of the people were concerned. 
With the peace, the military authority properly 
ceased ; and President Polk earnestly recommended 
Congress to pro\ade some government as a sub- 
stitute. For California this was an imperative 
need, for directly the discovery of gold was known, 
hordes of adventurers of every description had 
rushed in, and it was absolutely necessary that 
there should be some authority to repress and 
punish with a strong hand the disorderly and 
vicious, and protect the honest and industrious 
immigrants. 

Congress was so divided on the question of free 
soil or slave labor in these new possessions that all 
legislation was impossible. The House would pass 
no bill for their organization without a proviso 
prohibiting slavery, while the Senate would assent 
to no bill containing any such proviso ; and Con- 
gress adjourned six months after the peace, leaving 
them without a legal government or any provision 
for forming one. Under these circumstances, the 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 63 

military governors continued, though reluctantly, 
to exercise the same authority as before, relying 
for their justification quite as much upon the neces- 
sity of the case and the tacit acquiescence of the 
people, as upon the orders of the President. The 
acquiescence of the people was an unwilling one ; 
they were much disappointed that no permanent 
government had been provided for them ; but they 
followed the President's advice, and submitted to 
the existing condition of things in the expectation 
that, as he assured them. Congress would give 
them a proper government before the 4th of March, 
1849. As, however, from the inaction of Congress 
during the winter, these hopes gradually faded 
away, while the necessity for a strong and perma- 
nent government became continually more mani- 
fest, the people of California grew more and more 
restless, and in various localities, San Francisco, 
Sacramento and elsewhere, the inhabitants made 
abortive attempts to establish local legislatures 
and governments. General Riley succeeded in in- 
ducing the leaders of these tentative governments 
to forbear and delay, though he had only persuasion 
and argument to rely on, the attractions of the 
mines making it impossible to hold in the ranks on 
land either soldiers, sailors or marines. 

Riley was conscious, however, that he had ex- 
hausted his influence ; and when he learned that 
Congress had dissolved, and California was left 
without legislature or government, he at once 
(June iJ, 1849) issued a proclamation, calling 



64 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

upon the people to choose delegates to a convention 
to adopt a frame of government, state or territorial, 
as they might think best. 

The insurmountable obstacle to any territorial 
legislation in the second session of the thirtieth 
Congress, which expired March 4, 1849, had been, 
as before, the matter of slavery ; the Senate again 
rejecting any bill restricting slavery in the Terri- 
tories, and the House insisting on its absolute 
prohibition there. The presidential election of 
the previous summer had been fought by the 
Whigs with no platform ; Northern voters had been 
urged to support Taylor as the candidate of the 
party most firm and persistent in its opposition to 
slavery ; while on the other hand it had been con- 
tended at the South that absolute confidence could 
be placed in him as a Southern planter and the 
owner of three hundred slaves. The Democratic 
party had enunciated its doctrines on the subject 
of slavery in the platform of its convention ; and 
this platform had been supplemented by a letter 
from General Cass, insisting on the right of the 
people of a Territory to settle the question of slavery 
for themselves. This letter, however, was suscep- 
tible of a double construction, — at the North it 
was declared to mean that the people of a Territory 
could at any time determine for themselves the 
question of freedom or slavery there; while at 
the South it was relied on as containing the true 
Southern doctrine that the people of a Territory 
were powerless to take any action in regard to 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 65 

slavery while in their territorial condition, and 
could only do so when framing a state government. 

Among the solutions of the California question 
proposed during the winter of 1848-49, the one 
which had found most favor in the eyes of the 
South, though it failed to be adopted, was that of 
authorizing the inhabitants to form a state con- 
stitution and apply for admission to the Union. 
The Southerners thought that, if a convention for 
this purpose should be called under an act of Con- 
gress, with sufficient notice to them, they could 
flood California with their own people prepared to 
vote for a pro-slavery constitution, before the more 
distant Northerners could reach there. In the 
mean time, however, they hesitated to carry their 
slaves thither, partly because they feared that the 
Mexican laws abolishing slavery were still in force, 
and that their slaves would therefore be free in 
California ; partly because they were afraid of the 
passage of a bill prohibiting slavery there ; partly 
also, because, until the discovery of gold, it was 
very doubtful how far slave labor could be made 
profitable in California; and for another reason, 
perhaps of greater weight than all these, that the 
labor and expense of moving slaves rendered it 
practically impossible for any Southern planter to 
compete in the ordinary processes of emigration 
with the enterprise of the pioneers of the North 
and West. 

When General Taylor arrived in Washington, 
just before his inauguration, he was greatly disap- 



66 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

pointed to find that Congress was likely to expire 
without any provision for the government of Cali- 
fornia, and he used his best exertions, Seward act- 
ing as his representative and adviser, to secure the 
passage of a bill which should give the Territories 
some form of legal government. Having failed in 
this attempt, he then, with the approval of all the 
members of his cabinet, the majority of whom 
were Southerners, and with the assent of Seward, 
dispatched to California Thomas Butler King of 
Georgia, a former member of Congress from that 
State, "to encourage the people there to form a 
state constitution and ask for admission to the 
Union, assuring them of his support should they 
do so ; " and he took a similar course as to New 
Mexico. There is no reason to suppose that he 
had any special purpose, to introduce or to pro- 
hibit slavery in either Territory. His plan was 
that which had already been suggested, to look to 
the Territories themselves for the settlement of the 
territorial difficulties, letting the people organize 
their own governments, since Congress would not 
do so for them.^ 

As it turned out, neither General Taylor nor 
his messenger had any hand in calling the Califor- 
nia convention. General Riley, the military gov- 
ernor, published his proclamation before he had 
any communication with either of them. The 
proclamation stated that the course he was taking 
was advised by the President and by the secreta- 
1 Letter of John Tyler, March 5, 1849. 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 67 

ries of state and of war ; but it is clear from a 
comparison of dates that the President and public 
officers to whom he referred were Polk and his 
secretaries. King never saw Riley till the middle 
of June, and when the convention met was danger- 
ously ill and unable to be present; the only ad- 
vice he is known to have given was to recommend 
that the boundaries of the State be made as large 
as possible. This was doubtless in accordance 
with Taylor's view of sweeping into two new States 
all the territory acquired from Mexico ; and this 
was the course advocated in the convention by the 
Southern delegates, who may have hoped either 
to prevent the admission of California with such 
extensive boundaries, or at a later date to procure 
her division into two States, one of which would 
be slave though the other were free. At all events 
the boundary question was really the only matter 
in dispute in the convention. There was a due 
proportion of men from the South among the dele- 
gates, but the clause prohibiting slavery was unani- 
mously adopted. 

When Congress assembled in December, 1849, 
it was known that California, with a constitution 
prohibiting slavery, would at once apply for ad- 
mission as a State. The Mexican war had been a 
Southern war, brought about by Southern policy, 
largely fought by Southern officers and men, with 
the determination that its final result should be 
" to adjust the whole balance of power in the Con- 
federacy so as to give the South the control over 



68 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

the operations of the government in all time to 
come," and with the expectation that the territory- 
acquired by the war would create a new demand 
for slave labor and a great advance in the price of 
slaves. The admission of California as a free State 
would not merely rob the Southerners of what they 
considered the just political and pecuniary fruits of 
this war, but also, unless accompanied by that 
of a slave State at the same time, would destroy 
that equilibrium of sectional power in the Senate 
which had been successfully maintained ever since 
slavery had become a political question. 

Party ties were to a certain extent dropped when 
Congress assembled. The Southern Whigs and 
Democrats stood together on every question which 
appeared to them to have any sectional bearing. 
They were supported by some Northern Democrats, 
and were also aided by the small knot of Free 
Soilers in the House, whose violence of language, 
half justified by the personal attacks on themselves, 
hindered the cause they professed to have at heart, 
and helped that party which they said they were 
seeking to destroy. For a whole month the House 
of Representatives attempted to elect a speaker,^ 
and during this time the talk of the Secessionists 
was defiant and treasonable. 

^ The Free Soilers were not averse to any speaker who would 
pledge himself to give the Wilmot Proviso members control of 
the Committee on Territories, and nearly succeeded in electing 
a Democrat who had promised in writing to do this. Seward 
urged the Whigs of the House to stand firmly by Mr. Winthrop, 
the regular Whig candidate. 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 69 

When at last the House was organized and the 
President's message read, the vital struggle began. 
There were several burning questions connected 
with the war : the admission of California ; the 
true limits of Texas, — those which the United 
States were bound to recognize ; the proper gov- 
ernment of New Mexico and Utah. The Presi- 
dent thought California should be admitted, be- 
cause she had the population and all the other 
conditions requisite to form a State. He hoped 
that New Mexico might also come in as a State 
with a proper frame of government, and that the 
Texas boundary question might be settled as a 
judicial matter before the Supreme Court. Upon 
the last question he doubtless had some feeling and 
a very decided opinion, as he knew from his own 
personal experience during the war, that, whatever 
might have been claimed on paper, Texas had never 
actually governed a single inch of the land in dis- 
pute.^ The only importance of the matter arose 
from the fact that if the lands in dispute were a 
part of Texas they were already slave territory ; if 
they belonged to Mexico and became ours by the 

^ Texas had advanced claims to a large portion of New Mexico, 
cutting off many thousand square miles where there was no slavery, 
and insisting that it was included within her own limits where 
there was slavery. Polk, at the very end of his administration, 
issued orders to the officer in command in New Mexico to fall 
back before any inroad of the Texans, and surrender possession of 
the disputed territory. These orders Taylor at once revoked, and 
directed him to maintain the boundary line as the United States 
found it, and as ceded to them by the treaty. 



70 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

treaty, slavery had been abolished there before we 
acquired them. It was not, therefore, merely a 
Texas question, but a slavery question, and as such 
a sectional one. 

There were other matters, the discussion of 
which served to excite still more the hostile feel- 
ing already existing between North and South. 
Among these were, the question of the abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the 
prohibition of the slave trade between the States 
(neither of which had any such sujjport as to make 
it of political importance) ; of the inefficiency of 
the law for the surrender of fugitive slaves, and 
of the reluctance of the North to comply with the 
constitutional requirements on this point ; and of the 
prevention of the use of the District of Columbia 
as the common slave mart and exchange for the 
entire South. Though this last was hardly a sec- 
tional issue, as it received the support of senators 
and representatives from all parts of the country, 
yet it was so closely connected with the slavery 
agitation that debate upon it was liable to become 
passionate and personal. 

Upon the question of slavery in the Territories, 
the Southern view was, that the Constitution is a 
compact of union for limited purposes between sev- 
eral sovereign States, the citizens of each of which 
have in all the Territories a common property and 
equal rights with the citizens of every other State, 
any citizen having the right to carry there all pro- 
perty of every species recognized as such by the laws 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 71 

of his own State, and therefore slaves, if slaves were 
property in the State from which they were taken. 
Some Southerners went even farther than this, and 
insisted that under the provisions of the Constitu- 
tion for the return of fugitive slaves to their mas- 
ters, and for slave representation in Congress, 
slaves were a kind of property entitled to special 
and pecidiar favor, singled out by the Constitution 
from the mass of other property, invested with 
higher dignity and guarded with greater security, 
too precious to be intrusted solely to state law, 
and especially under the protecting aegis of the 
Constitution ; or, as it was forcibly put by one of 
the ablest exponents of the Southern doctrine : 
" This is a pro-slavery government ; slavery is 
stamped upon its heart, the Constitution. No 
matter where you place the power to legislate on 
the Territory, the power to legislate on questions of 
slavery is a legitimate instrument of it. Slaves 
are property — our property. If it is said slavery 
is a peculiar institution against the common law 
of mankind, then I reply, our government is a pe- 
culiar government, our Constitution is a peculiar 
Constitution, for they are both impregnated with 
this peculiarity." In short, it was insisted that, 
without any legal enactments, slavery existed by 
force of the Constitution in aU the Territories of 
the United States, and that neither foreisrn laws 
before conquest, nor domestic legislation after- 
wards, could prohibit or abolish it. 

The original opposition of the North to the ex- 



72 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

tension of slavery to the new Territories was not 
founded upon political considerations. The North- 
erners had submitted, without reluctance, to the 
supremacy of the South for two thirds or more of 
the whole period of the history of the government, 
and were practically indifferent about the matter. 
The men of the North were engaged in all sorts 
of industrial and commercial enterprises, their in- 
terest in politics was limited, and their opposition 
to slavery and its extension was in most cases an 
objection upon moral grounds. The Southerners, 
on the contrary, had few occupations except poli- 
tics and the ordinary pursuits of a country life, 
and they had controlled the government almost 
from its foundation, either directly through one 
of their own number, or indirectly through some 
Northerner designated by them for President. 
They saw the possibility, and feared the proba- 
bility, of this political supremacy slipping from 
them, and believed the admission of California as 
a free State to be the first fatal step in a path 
which would ultimately leave them in a position 
of inferiority and subjection to the North in the 
government and administration. To them the con- 
test was not merely for a theoretic principle, but 
for a positive, actual, valuable right. 

General Taylor having been nominated with no 
platform or declaration of principles, any policy 
which he advocated as to the settlement of the 
slavery question might fairly be called the Presi- 
dent's policy, and no Whig need feel that, if he 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 73 

failed to support it, he was breaking loose from, 
his party. There was, indeed, no Whig party, in 
that sense in which party means a combination of 
persons agreeing upon certain political principles, 
and united to carry out a certain political policy. 
The questions which had united the Whigs were 
either dead or dormant, and on the only living politi- 
cal issue they had, as a national party, no principles 
and no policy. Those members of Congress, there- 
fore, who had been always classed as Whigs and 
were elected as Whigs, felt at liberty to vote as 
they pleased upon all the questions relating to the 
Territories. 

Taylor was also unfortunate in the fact that he 
had not the support of the two great leaders of 
the Whig party, Clay and Webster. Clay thought 
himself ill-treated by Taylor in regard to the nom- 
ination, and never forgave him. He had declined 
to advocate or support him during the campaign. 
He was not present at the inauguration. When 
he took his seat in the Senate in the middle of 
December, he announced his purpose of taking 
" the lead of no subject and no party ; " yet a few 
weeks later he made a speech which drew from 
one of his opponents the observation, that he well 
knew "the senator from Kentucky formally de- 
clined exercising on behalf of the administration 
a parliamentary leadership, but had no suspicion, 
until he listened to his speech, that he meditated 
a regular course of hostilities against those in 
power." 



74 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

Webster, the other great leader of the Whig 
party, had sulked in his tent by the sea the whole 
summer long ; and when he was at last induced to 
leave his solitude to speak at a political meeting, 
he only said that Taylor's nomination was one not 
fit to be made ; but that, as he was the Whig can- 
didate, he should support him. He was in Wash- 
ington when Taylor arrived there, and called upon 
him at once ; but his real feeling towards the in- 
coming President is to be seen in an extract from 
a letter, in which he says : " Although I would not 
yield myself to any undue feelings of self-respect, 
yet it is certain that I am senior in years to Gen- 
eral Taylor, that I have been thirty years in public 
life, . . . have had . . . friends, who have thought 
that for the administration of civil and political 
affairs my own qualifications entitle me to be con- 
sidered a candidate for the office to which General 
Taylor has been chosen. I feel [therefore] that I 
shall best consult my own dignity by declining to 
fill a subordinate position in the executive govern- 
ment." 1 

Before Congress met in December, Taylor's 
course as to California had alienated the lead- 
ing Southern Whigs, upon whom he might have 
thought he could depend ; and either from inclina- 
tion or necessity he consulted Seward, the only 

^ Websterh Life, ii. p. 357. Webster was born in January, 
1782, Taylor in September, 1784, A year later Webster accepted 
a subordinate position, and became secretary of state to FUlmore, 
■who was bom in January, 1800, and so was sixteen years younger 
than Taylor. 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 75 

Whig senator from the most important State in 
the Union, and his active supporter in the election 
campaign. Indeed, confidential relations between 
them had begun even before the inauguration, and 
a few weeks later attention had been called to 
these relations by the publication of a letter from 
Seward, written to exonerate Taylor from the 
charge of having used his influence with the Con- 
gress which had just expired, in favor of legislation 
which would have fastened slavery on all our newly 
acquired Territories. The letter was well inten- 
tioned ; it had been read and approved by the 
Cabinet before it was given to the press ; neverthe- 
less, its publication was unfortunate. To have 
public proclamation made that he was taking for 
one of his chief counselors a radical anti-slavery 
man like Seward, and one so inexperienced in 
national politics, injured the President, not only 
with Clay and the Southern Whigs, but also with 
Webster and his friends. There was so little ap- 
parent necessity for printing the letter, that Seward 
was taunted with having done this that he might 
make a display of his confidential relations with 
General Taylor, and he became in consequence a 
ready mark for the attacks of all the senators, of 
whatever party, who were either tacitly or avowedly 
hostile to the administration. 

From the moment of the assembling of Congress 
the air of the Capitol was heavy with the coming 
storm. There seemed to be no question the dis- 
cussion of which was harmless. A resolution to 



76 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

extend tlie courtesies of the Senate to Father Ma- 
thew, the Irish apostle of temperance, brought on 
a discussion as to slavery. A debate upon our 
diplomatic relations with Austria soon drifted into 
the same channel. 

In talking about the subjects to be embraced in 
the census, abolition and the abolitionists were 
among the topics treated of, and the discussion 
was made the occasion for bitter personalities. 
Threats of disunion were frequent. These were 
partly in earnest, and were partly intended to ex- 
cite the fears of the people of the North, that they 
might yield more readily to the demands of the 
slaveholders and assent to the legislation they de- 
sired. In many of these debates Seward took 
part, and was, when the occasion required, vigor- 
ous and outspoken in declaring his hostility to slav- 
ery and his hopes of ultimate emancipation. He 
made no personal attacks on any one, and replied 
once for all to those made on him : *' I am here for 
public measures, not for private ends, and no im- 
putations shall ever put me on a defense of myself 
against aspersions or complaints of this kind." 

Taylor, though inexperienced in political affairs 
or civil administration, was a man of good sense, 
single-minded, honest, direct, averse to anything 
in the nature of political intrigue or bargain, of 
sterling integrity, of undoubted loyalty and un- 
hesitating courage, able and determined to dis- 
charge his duty as he understood it, and impatient 
at the Southern bluster and threats of disunion, 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 77 

which he considered treasonable, and in the face 
of which what was called compromise aeemed to 
him a cowardly surrender to disloyalty. He saw 
no connection between a bill admitting California 
as a free State and acts organizing the other 
Territories, or establishing the true boundaries of 
Texas ; and a combination to secure the passage of 
any one bill by arrangement with the friends of 
the others seemed to him a base business. He 
miffht have assented to all the measures contem- 
plated by Clay's compromise resolutions, each on 
its own merits, but never as a bargain between 
contending sections.^ On the 21st of January, 
1850, he sent to Congress a message recommending 
the admission of California with the constitution it 
had formed prohibiting slavery, confining his mes- 
sage to this subject alone. 

Clay, Calhoun and "Webster were this year to- 
gether in the Senate for the last time. Clay 
was the man of compromise. He had been the 
father of the Missouri Compromise in 1821, had 
quieted the threatened nullification outbreak of 
South Carolina a dozen years later by another 
compromise, and now came forward for the last 
time, offering a series of resolutions to be after- 

^ " I would rather have California wait than bring in all the 
' Territories on her back.' " Taylor to Webster, Curtis's Webster, 
ii. 473. Southern Whigs in Congress said the Southern officers 
•would refuse to obey, if ordered to maintain the line of New 
Mexico against Texas. " Then," said Taylor, " I will command 
the army in person, and hang any man taken in treason." Schou- 
ler, V. p. 185. 



78 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

wards embodied in appropriate legislation. They 
were intended to cover all the matters in dis- 
pute, and to be a full and final adjustment of all 
questions relating to slavery. California was to 
be admitted as a free State ; the other territory 
conquered from Mexico was to have a proper 
territorial government, with no provision either 
introducing or excluding slavery ; the western 
boundary of Texas was to be established, and that 
State paid from the public ti-easury for the relin- 
quishment of its claims to any part of New Mexico. 
The resolves further declared that, so long as 
slavery existed in Maryland and Delaware, it was 
inexpedient to abolish it in the District of Colum- 
bia without the assent of those States ; but that it 
was expedient to prohibit there the trade in slaves 
brought from without the District ; that Congress 
had no power to interfere with the slave trade 
between the different slave States, and that more 
effectual provision ought to be made for the resti- 
tution of fugitive slaves. 

Clay had been for some time deliberating on the 
matter of these resolutions. On the 2d of January 
he wrote to his son James : " I have been thinking 
much of proposing some comprehensive scheme of 
settling amicably the whole question in all its 
bearings, but have not yet positively determined 
to do so." Before offering his resolves, he went, 
on a stormy evening, to Webster's house and 
secured his approval. He introduced them in the 
Senate at the end of the month, and a little later 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 79 

the great debate began. For two days, to a cham- 
ber crowded with an eager and excited audience, 
Clay spoke eloquently and persuasively in support 
of his resolves, appealing to the North for conces- 
sion, and to the South for peace. A month later 
Calhoun, tall, gaunt, and haggard, with the shadow 
of coming death on his face, sat in the Senate, 
while a friend read for him his carefully prepared 
argument. He opposed Clay's resolutions, and 
insisted that the South required further legislation 
for the protection of her peculiar institution, and 
for the security and maintenance of that equilib- 
rium between the slave and free States, which he 
asserted was a fundamental condition originally 
insisted on by the South in joining the Union. 
On the 7th of March Webster followed. His 
speech was not a discussion of the subjects consid- 
ered in Clay's resolutions ; it was an appeal " for 
the preservation of the Union " and the restoration 
to the couptry of quiet and harmony. Penetrated 
with a deep sense of what the Union had accom- 
plished during the seventy years of its existence, 
and of the future it promised, if it remained un- 
broken, he compared slavery to a spot on the face 
of the sun, and the persons who would break up 
the government on account of it to those who would 
strike the light from the heavens, if there were 
any imperfection in it, and prefer the chance of 
utter darkness. He endeavored to make the pro- 
posed compromises acceptable to the free States, 
and for this purpose minimized the concessions 



80 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

required of them, and either wholly omitted or 
touched but lightly on their complaints ; on the 
other hand, he dwelt at length on the wrongs done 
the South by the general hostility to slavery, by 
the violent language of the abolitionists, and by the 
evasion of the constitutional provision for the sur- 
render of fugitive slaves. He would, therefore, he 
said, vote for a more stringent law on the last sub- 
ject ; while he should vote against the insertion of a 
proviso prohibiting slavery in any bills organizing 
governments for the territory acquired from Mex- 
ico, because slavery was excluded from those re- 
gions by a law of nature, and he would not " reenact 
the will of God," or wound to no purpose the pride 
of the South. Upon the other subjects of the 
resolves he was silent. 

This speech was a great disappointment to many 
Northern Whigs, including some of Webster's 
warmest supporters. It cannot be denied that it 
has a very different ring from that in which he 
claimed the Wilmot Proviso as his own thunder, or 
from his political utterances of the September pre- 
vious, when he said : " There has for a long time 
been no North ; I think the North star is at last 
discovered. I think there will be a North, but up 
to the recent session of Congress there has been no 
North, no section of the country in which there has 
been found a strong, conscientious, united oppo- 
sition to slavery ; no such North has existed." 
Yet, though there was much bitterness of feeling 
and criticism, and imputation of base motives at 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS 81 

the time, it is only just to Mr. "Webster to admit 
that the speech may have been inspired by his pro- 
found love for the Union and his conviction that it 
was in great peril ; that his honest apprehensions 
of its imminent destruction affected the whole tone 
as well as the conclusions of the argument by which 
he attempted to undo at once with the Northern 
voters his own work of many years. The success 
he met with at the time was a striking tribute to 
his personal power. In the cities the merchants, 
manufacturers and business people generally, many 
scholars and thoughtful persons acting with them, 
held large and enthusiastic Union meetings, and 
resolved their approval of Webster's speech and 
Clay's compromises. But the country folks, the 
rural districts, held off, and "Webster never re- 
gained his hold on them. The "Whig party at the 
North split into two factions, the " Conscience " 
and the " Cotton " "Whigs ; and there were in the 
next Congress an increased number of senators 
and representatives distinctly opposed to the doc- 
trine of the 7th of March speech and to the mea- 
sures of compromise, who made the nucleus for the 
formation of the Kepublican party. 



CHAPTER V 

CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES : SEWARD'S 
SPEECH 

Seward, during the winter, was the object of 
many attacks and a great deal of personal abuse 
from Southern senators, who seemed to go out of 
their way to insult him. To these he replied, as 
has been said, that he had come to the Senate for 
public, not for private ends ; that he should pass 
by in silence, as he had before done, all such per- 
sonal attacks ; that he admitted the purity and 
patriotism of the motives of all other senators, 
and expected the same justice to be done to him- 
self. He was not on any committee during this 
session. He asked to be excused from the com- 
mittee on patents, to which he had been assigned, 
upon the ground that his previous employment as 
counsel in patent suits might be embarrassing to 
him ; and no other place could be found for him 
except by a re-arrangement of all the committees, 
which he thought not worth while. 

When Clay and Webster spoke, the silver tongue 
and personal charm of the one, the majestic elo- 
quence and noble presence of the other, and the na- 
tional reputation of both, filled the Senate chamber 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES 83 

with their admirers, women as well as men ; and 
their speeches met with a sympathetic response 
from the people of Washington, Southerners and 
slaveholders as they were. Seward had no such 
presence, no such eloquence, no such reputation, 
and when a few days later he rose to speak, the 
Senate was substantially empty. The President's 
message transmitting the constitution of California 
was the special order of the day, and it was to the 
question of the admission of that State that Sew- 
ard particularly addressed himself. It is difficult 
to give within moderate limits an analysis of this 
great speech. An intelligent listener said of it, at 
the time, that it " was marked by more breadth of 
view, more vigor of thought, and a more profound 
and masterly treatment of the subject, than was 
displayed by either Clay or Webster." 

On the other hand. Clay wrote to his son a few 
days after its delivery: "Mr. Seward's late abo- 
lition speech . . . has eradicated the respect of 
almost all men for him." These different state- 
ments represent the extreme divergence of public 
opinion at the North and South. The speech 
marked an epoch in discussions on slavery in the 
Senate of the United States. It was the first 
time that any senator, regularly elected by one of 
the great parties of the country, had made in the 
Senate not merely a statement of his own position, 
but what was felt to be an authentic declaration 
of the attitude as to slavery of a formidable and 
growing minority, if not a majority, of the people 



84 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

of the North. It was the first time that the sena- 
tors had been called on to recognize the fact, which 
many of them were striving to ignore, that " a 
moral question, transcending the too narrow creeds 
of parties, had arisen, that the public conscience 
was expanding with it, and the green withes of 
party associations giving way and falling off," 

Seward began by brushing aside the formal and 
trifling objections brought forward by the oppo- 
nents of the immediate admission of California, 
all of which were to be waived if the admission of 
this free State should be accompanied by sundry 
irrelevant concessions to slavery, — a new fugitive 
slave law, a guaranty of the perpetuity of slavery 
in the District of Columbia, acquiescence in its ex- 
istence in the Territories of Utah and New Mexico. 
Passing from these objections, he proceeded to 
state the reasons which to his mind rendered the 
immediate admission of California imperative. 
The substance of these was that California was 
in fact already a State, and could never be a Terri- 
tory, colony or military dependence ; that remote 
as she was on the Pacific coast, with the population 
that had suddenly filled her borders, she needed a 
constitution, sovereignty, independence and pro- 
tection, — either a share of ours, which she had 
asked for, or her own, which she could assume 
without our consent, if we rejected her appeal; 
and that if we wished to retain her, and Oregon 
with her, we could not afford to trifle or delay. 
He then considered the position of those persons 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES 85 

who insisted that to the admission of California 
should be joined fresh compromises on questions 
connected with slavery. It was to what he had 
to say on this point that the especial interest and 
importance of his speech attached. The admis- 
sion of California was almost conceded. The real 
struggle was on what should be yielded in return. 
Declaring himself, for various reasons, opposed to 
all legislative compromises not absolutely neces- 
sary, he took up in turn each of the particular 
measures proposed, commenting briefly on the 
incongruity of the subjects tacked together in the 
resolves. He next examined Calhoun's statement, 
that nothing would satisfy the South except such 
legislation as would secure a permanent equilib- 
rium between the free and slave States ; this he 
pronounced absolutely impossible, as it must in- 
volve a veto by the minority of the majority, which 
meant nothing less than a return to the rope of sand 
of the old Confederacy, and a subjection of the 
people of the growing States of the North and 
West to the more stationary population of the 
slave States. 

Speaking of the proposed Fugitive Slave Law, 
he took the ground not merely that a more strin- 
gent law would be useless, as it was opposed to 
the moral convictions of the people of the North, 
denied all the recognized safeguards of personal 
liberty, and converted into a crime that hospital- 
ity to the outcast and refugee which all mankind 
save the slaveholder considered an act of common 



86 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

humanity ; but he also insisted that, to have the 
constitutional provision as to the return of fugitive 
slaves honestly carried out, the rigors of the law 
must be alleviated, not increased. Referring to 
the proposal that, as part of the compromises, 
Congress should deprive itself of the power of 
emancipation in the District of Columbia, he de- 
clared that he would at any time vote for the abo- 
lition of slavery there, with a proper compensation 
to the slave-owners, and was willing to appropriate 
any sum necessary for this purpose. 

It was, however, what he said in treating of the 
public domain, and of the power and duty of Con- 
gress in regard to it, that so greatly stirred the 
people of both sections at the time, and has since 
been often quoted and misinterpreted by both 
friends and enemies. 

" The national domain is ours. ... It was ac- 
quired by the valor and with the wealth of the 
whole nation. We hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary 
power over it. . . . The Constitution regulates our 
stewardship ; the Constitution devotes the domain 
to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare and to 
liberty. But there is a higher laid than the Con- 
stitution^ which regulates our authority over the 
domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. 
The territory is a part of the common heritage of 
mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator. We 
are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust 
as to secure in the higliest attainable degree their 
happiness. . . . Whether, therefore, I regard the 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES 87 

welfare of the future inhabitants of these new Ter- 
ritories, or the security and welfare of the whole 
people of the United States, I cannot consent to 
introduce slavery into any part of this continent, 
which is now exempt from what seems to me so 
great an evil, ... or to compromise the questions 
relating to slavery, as a condition of the admission 
of California." 

To the argument that the prohibition of slavery 
was unnecessary, he answered : — 

" There is no climate uncongenial to slavery. . . . 
Labor is in quick demand in all new countries. 
Slave labor is cheaper than free labor, and it would 
go first into new regions, and wherever it goes it 
brings labor into dishonor. . . . Was the ordinance 
of 1787 necessary or not ? Necessary, we all agree ; 
and yet that ordinance extended the inhibition of 
slavery from the thirty-seventh to the fortieth par- 
allel of latitude. . . . We are told that we may 
rely on the laws of God, which prohibit slave labor 
in this new territory, and that it is absurd to re- 
enact the laws of God. The Constitution of the 
United States and the constitutions of all the 
States are full of such reenactments. Wherever I 
find a law of God or a law of nature disregarded, 
or in danger of being disregarded, there I shall 
vote to reaffirm it with all the sanction of civil 
authority." 

In all this there is nothing startling, revolution- 
ary or treasonable, nothing even that is novel or 
original. The same thought had been expressed 



88 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

more than once by English philosophers and writers 
upon jurisprudence. Two hundred and fifty years 
before, Bishop Hooker had written those noble and 
familiar words : " Of law, there can be no les3 
acknowledged than that her seat is in the bosom 
of God." Already in this very speech Seward had 
quoted from another political philosopher, " There 
is but one law for all, namely, that law which 
governs all law, — the law of our Creator." In 
any point of view the passage was harmless, for 
far from antagonizing or contrasting the Constitu- 
tion and the laws of God, Seward was insisting 
that they were both in harmony and working to 
the same noble ends. 

Nor was he responsible for introducing into the 
debate both the " higher law " and the Constitu- 
tion as conclusive authorities as to slavery and the 
riffhts of the slaveholders. Southern senators had 
already appealed to them. On the day on which 
Clay introduced his resolutions. Mason, of Virginia, 
and Davis, of Mississippi, had both insisted that 
the Constitution carried slavery into all the Terri- 
tories, and protected it there. A fortnight later, 
Davis declared slavery to be " a blessing, estab- 
lished by God's decree, and sanctioned by the 
Bible, from Genesis to Revelation." A few days 
before Seward spoke, Davis had again rested the 
Southern case upon the same authorities, saying : 
" It is the Bible and the Constitution on which we 
rely, and we are not to be answered by the dicta of 
earthly wisdom or more earthly arrogance, when 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES 89 

we have those high authorities to teach and to con- 
strue the decrees of God." It was natural, there- 
fore, it was fit, and it was necessary, that some 
senator holding the opposite opinions should also 
appeal to the " higher law " which the Southerners 
had already invoked, and should say that he did 
not so read the Bible and the Constitution, though 
he also found them both in accord, — the one a 
gospel of freedom, not a decree of bondage, and 
the other a charter of liberty, not a law of servi- 
tude. 

The rest of Seward's speech was devoted to con- 
sidering the argument that the Union was in dan- 
ger, and could only be saved by compromise. He 
was but little moved by the threats and passionate 
talk of dissolving the Union unless satisfactory 
concessions were made to slavery. He attached, or 
professed to attach, but little importance to them ; 
but the Southern leaders and many of their fol- 
lowers were in deadly earnest and meant all that 
they said. The Southern heart, however, had not 
yet been thoroughly fired, the slave States had made 
no preparations for secession, there had been no 
single act or even fancied aggression of which they 
could complain ; and they knew that, while Taylor 
lived, there could be no peaceable separation, that 
he considered secession to be treason and would 
not hesitate to treat it accordingly. Ten years' 
delay, and the complaisance of a President as 
feeble and vacillating as Taylor was prompt and 
resolute, were needed to complete their preparations 



90 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

and put them in readiness for action. That Seward 
saw any part of this is more than doubtful. He 
thought the Union practically indissoluble, because 
the centripetal and conservative forces seemed to 
him much stronger than the centrifugal. It seemed 
to him that the South, on reflection, would realize 
that, if there were to be a dissolution, the probable 
line of cleavage would run north and south, follow- 
ing the great river. He could not believe that the 
people of the South, when it came to the point, 
would be willing to say to the civilized world that 
they had seceded from the Union in order to 
establish a government of which African slavery 
should be the corner-stone, and its maintenance 
and perpetuity the final cause. Animated as he 
personally was by the conviction that slavery, 
which he had abhorred since the youthful days of 
his teaching in Georgia, must give way before the 
light of modern civilization, he felt confident that 
the Southerners, looking at the question calmly, 
would at last prefer that the Union should stand, 
and slavery " disappear gradually, voluntarily and 
with compensation," rather than that the Union 
should be dissolved, and, as he foresaw, " civil 
war and violent, complete and immediate emanci- 
pation follow." The day, he trusted, was far off, 
when the fountains of popular content should be 
broken up ; but should it ever come, he felt certain 
that it would show " how calmly, how firmly, how 
nobly a great people can act in preserving their 
Constitution." 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES 91 

At this time, Clay, Calhoun, Webster and 
Seward practically represented all the shades of 
public opinion in the different sections of the 
country on the subject of slavery, except the views 
of the radical abolitionists. Clay, recognizing the 
existing antagonism between the North and South 
arising from the various questions connected with 
slavery, thought that, if some arrangement could 
be made by which the pending issues could be 
compromised, no further differences would arise, 
and this disturbing and dangerous element would 
be removed from our politics. Calhoun considered 
any such compromise as a mere palliative. In his 
opinion the Union was only a compact between 
two classes of equal, sovereign States, one class 
having slaves and the other not; and there must 
be an exact equilibrium of political power between 
these two classes, or the compact could not be 
permanent. Webster believed that the gain to 
mankind by the maintenance and perpetuation of 
the Union would far outweigh any loss or injury 
from concessions to, or compromises with, slavery 
and the slave States. Seward thought that the 
slave States and slaveholders were entitled to the 
exact rights and privileges which the Constitution 
gave them, but to nothing more ; that slavery was 
a moral and political wrong, and that under no 
compulsion and by no persuasion would he ever 
consent to give it one hair's breadth of advantage 
not distinctly secured to it by the compromises of 
the Constitution. 



92 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

After a debate, protracted more than two months, 
Clay's resolutions, with the amendments and the 
substitutes proposed by other senators, were re- 
ferred to a committee of thirteen, of which he was 
chairman. A month later this committee reported 
three bills. The first of these made two amend- 
ments to the Fugitive Slave Bill then pending be- 
fore the Senate ; the second put an end to the use 
of the District of Columbia as a public slave mart 
for the States. The third was a bill of thirty-nine 
■Sections, — the first four of which provided for the 
admission of California, the next seventeen gave 
Utah a territorial government, and prohibited the 
territorial legislature from passing any law as to 
African slavery. Seventeen more sections provided 
a similar government for New Mexico. The last 
section contained a proposition to Texas as to the 
settlement of her boundaries. This third bill soon 
became known as the " Omnibus bill." 

Those Southerners who had always opposed 
Clay's resolutions at once attacked this " Omnibus 
bill," and all through the hot and sultry summer 
the debate went on, personal, acrimonious, eager, 
passionate. The Southern senators were unwearied 
in their efforts to gain here or there something 
more than the bill gave them. They endeavored 
to limit the southern boundary of California to the 
line of the Missouri Compromise, and to provide 
for a slave State out of the territory thus cut 
off, to obtain a distinct recognition of what they 
claimed to be their constitutional right to carry 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES 93 

slaves into New Mexico and hold them there, 
though the laws of that country abolishing slavery- 
had never been repealed, and also to secure an 
admission of the power of the territorial legisla- 
tures to pass laws for the protection of slavery, 
but not for its prohibition. Clay, in spite of his 
years and feebleness, was indefatigable in defense 
of the committee, and in his endeavors to pass the 
bill ; but all was in vain. By successive amend- 
ments it was gradually reduced to a simple act to 
provide a territorial government for Utah ; and so 
mutilated, it passed the Senate on the last day of 
July. 

Before this happened, Taylor, after a short ill- 
ness, had died. So long as he lived. Clay had 
against him, not so much Taylor's active opposi- 
tion as the knowledge of every senator that this 
plan was not the President's or approved by him, 
and that he had said to a senator who was opposed 
to the compromise measures : " Stand firm, don't 
yield." But when Fillmore succeeded Taylor, he 
called to his cabinet Webster and Corwin, the 
leading compromisers from the free States, and 
exerted all the influence of his administration to 
secure the passage of the Omnibus bill. Contrary, 
however, to the expectation of its advocates, it 
turned out that the tacking together of so many 
incongruous matters was a source of weakness, 
that it served to combine the opponents rather 
than to unite the friends of the separate measures, 
and so brought about the defeat of the entire bill. 



94 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

All the measures recommended by the committee 
were, however, carried later, each in a separate act. 
It is the fashion to talk of these as compromise 
measures, but it is in a certain sense a misnomer ; 
they did not as a whole receive the support of a 
majority of the committee of thirteen, less than 
one third of its members voting for all the biUs. 
The separate acts were carried by different com- 
binations of senators, only eighteen senators voting 
for all the bills as passed ; of these, twelve were 
Northern Democrats, one a Northern Whig from 
Pennsylvania; four were Southern Whigs, and 
one, Houston, of Texas, a Southern Democrat. 
The analysis shows that it was not to be expected 
that measures, which taken as a whole found so 
little general support, could be a final settlement 
of all questions as to slavery. 

Had Taylor lived, the compromise measures 
would probably have failed to pass in any form. 
The threats of disunion had steeled him against 
concessions to the demands of the South. " I am 
pained to learn," said he, " that we have disunion 
men to deal with. Disunion is treason." It seems 
the very irony of fate that this Southern President, 
for whom so many Northern Whigs hesitated or 
refused to vote, because he was a slaveholder and 
the representative of slaveholding interests, should 
have been abandoned by the great leaders of the 
party upon such a question, and should have 
stood without their support, an immovable bul- 
wark against the slaveholders, in spite of South- 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES 95 

ern pressure and Northern weakness. Webster 
thought Taylor's death delivered the country at 
that time from the horrors of civil war ; and later 
writers have said that " the slaveholding States 
would have been more able to hold their own in 
1850 than they proved to be in 1861." But se- 
cession, had it been then attempted, would have 
lost the ten years of organization and preparation 
secured by delay, and would have encountered the 
iron will and firm resolve of a Southern soldier, 
who would have acted while others talked, and 
whose well known character would have made the 
stoutest secessionist hesitate before he took the 
fatal step which separates declamation from ac- 
tion. The South did not secede in 1850 because 
the masses were not ready to do so, and because 
the leaders knew well what they might expect 
from the President. Had any State committed 
a single overt act of rebellion, there would have 
been at once a resort to force. The offenders 
would have been quickly reduced to obedience, 
but slavery would have been untouched, and the 
whole battle would have remained to be fought 
out at a later day. 

The death of Taylor made a great difference in 
Seward's political weight in the Senate ; he had 
been recognized as the advocate, if not the official 
representative of the President's policy, and this 
position lent additional importance to his words. 
But he had no such relations with Fillmore. On 
the contrary, though in their early political days 



96 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

both Fillmore and Seward had been anti-Masons, 
and both were original members of the Whig 
party, yet each of them had his own friends and 
followers, who looked to him when in office or 
power for crumbs from the political feast ; and 
there was early established between them or their 
partisans a rivalry in the prosecution of claims for 
spoils. When questions as to slavery first became 
prominent, their opinions seemed substantially the 
same ; but later, while Seward grew more out- 
spoken against slavery, Fillmore became more 
conservative and cautious. When Fillmore was 
nominated for vice-president, he was understood 
to represent the anti-Seward wing of the Whig 
party ; and the probability of difficulties from the 
counter-claims to office of their respective support- 
ers was so fully recognized, that an attempt was 
made to effect an amicable arrangement between 
them as to the division of places ; but it did not 
succeed. Some of Fillmore's friends were first 
served ; but the fact that the governor and state 
authorities of New York belonged to the Seward 
wing of the party, which was far more numerous 
than Fillmore's, and that to this wing Taylor was 
principally indebted for the vote of the State, made 
it essential that this wing should be chiefly recog- 
nized in the distribution of offices. 

The change in the attitude of the administration 
towards the compromise measures, which occurred 
on Fillmore's accession to office, did not affect 
Seward's position regarding them, or that of the 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES 97 

Whigs who were his followers. The Whig pa- 
pers in the State of New York which had hitherto 
opposed them continued to do so, and President 
Fillmore became proscriptive. He removed the 
Albany postmaster, a friend of the editor of the 
Albany " Evening Journal," a paper outspoken 
in its hostility to the compromises ; and the whole 
influence of his administration was exerted, in 
vain, to prevent the Whig state convention of 
New York, in the autumn of 1850, from passing 
any resolution approving Seward's course. The 
president of the convention was one of the con- 
servative Whigs, or, as they were afterwards 
called, Silver Greys ; he appointed a committee 
on resolutions, so selected as to make it sure that 
they would let Seward severely alone. But when 
they made their report, a resolve indorsing Sew- 
ard's course was moved as an amendment and car- 
ried by a handsome majority. The administration 
members of the convention thereupon withdrew to 
another hall and indorsed the President and the 
compromises. In the Senate, within three weeks 
after Taylor's death, a Southern senator threat- 
ened to move Seward's expulsion ; and as he him- 
self wrote : " By the advent of Mr. Fillmore " he 
" was buried below low- water mark." 

The compromise measures, passed as separate 
bills before the adjournment of Congress in Septem- 
ber, 1850, and which were practically all the work 
of the session, conceded to the North the admission 
of California as a free State, and the abolition of 



98 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

the slave trade in the District of Columbia ; to the 
South, territorial governments for New Mexico 
and Utah, with no exclusion of slavery, the adjust- 
ment of the boundary line between New Mexico 
and Texas, so as to give Texas a large area which 
she had never occupied or governed while an in- 
dependent republic, the payment to her of ten 
million dollars for relinquishing a purely paper 
and nominal claim to still more of New Mexico, 
and the enactment of a new and more stringent 
law for the recovery of fugitive slaves. These 
measures were proclaimed to be a final settlement 
of the whole slavery question, which had thus be- 
come a dead issue. 

Perhaps the compromises would have allayed 
the excitement, and have been accepted at the 
North with practical unanimity, but for the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law. But this law was odious to the 
communities in which it was to be enforced. It 
contained no statute of limitations ; it permitted 
the recapture of runaways, who had been for years 
residents in, and had become citizens of, the dif- 
ferent free States. The proceedings were assumed 
to be analogous to those by which a person charged 
with a crime in a State from which he has fled is 
surrendered to take his trial there ; and the statute 
was so drawn that colored persons alleged to be 
fugitive slaves could be arrested upon ex jjarte 
affidavits and hurried into slavery upon the pro- 
duction of mere formal proofs, with no opportunity 
to try the question of their freedom in the States 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES 99 

where they were living and where all the testimony 
tending to establish this was naturally to be found. 
While, as if to make the statute still more offen- 
sive to the North, it was provided that the com- 
missioners who were to administer the law should 
receive a fee, when the alleged fugitive was re- 
turned, twice as large as that to which they would 
be entitled if the captive were discharged. Had 
the law been less arbitrary and brutal, had it pro- 
vided some safeguards for freedom, some remedies 
for mistakes of identity, had it made any conces- 
sions to Northern sentiment and to the civilization 
of the nineteenth century, the people of the free 
States might have permanently acquiesced in it as 
a legitimate mode of fulfilling an obligation which 
the Constitution imposed on them, repugnant to 
their conscience and feelings as that obligation 
was. But the actual statute was a mere firebrand 
flung among the opponents of slavery at the North, 
and every case that arose added fuel to the spread- 
ing flames of the popular excitement against it. 



CHAPTER VI 

Fillmore's administration 

After the passage of the compromise measures, 
there was a lull in the great contest between free- 
dom and slavery, as often after a battle both com- 
batants seek repose, and time to recruit their 
strength before renewing the conflict ; and this 
truce lasted, with no signs of any new struggle, 
until the close of Fillmore's administration in 
1853. 

The congressional session of 1850-51 was politi- 
cally unimportant. It was yet too soon for either 
the North or the South to declare that the compro- 
mise measiu-es were not a finality ; although in the 
free States many meetings, with resolutions indors- 
ing the Fugitive Slave Law and declaring an un- 
faltering determination to execute it, and a deluge 
of pamphlets and sermons by its supporters, lay 
and clerical, were found necessary to offset the 
meetings, speeches and sermons of its opponents, 
and to endeavor to overcome the hostility of the 
North to its enforcement. In November, 1850, 
Mr. Webster wrote to the President from Boston : 
" There is now no probability of any resistance if 
a fugitive should be arrested." Yet only three 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION 101 

months afterwards a negro, arrested as a fugitive 
slave, was rescued from the court house there at 
high noon and successfully carried to Canada ; and 
in spite of the utmost exertions on the part of the 
government, no one was ever convicted of taking 
part in his escape. Quite as significant of the 
public opinion of the North, though in a different 
way, was the election to the Senate from New 
York, Fillmore's own State, of Hamilton Fish, an 
opponent of the compromises, as Seward's col- 
league ; while Ohio sent Benjamin Wade, a most 
outspoken Free Soiler ; and in Massachusetts, 
though only by a bargain for offices between Dem- 
ocrats and Free Soilers, Charles Sumner, an ex- 
ponent of the extreme anti-slavery opinion, though 
not a political abolitionist, succeeded Webster in 
the Senate. 

Though " political ends, and not real evils result- 
ing from the escape of slaves, constituted the pre- 
vailing motives for the enactment of the Fugitive 
Slave Law," yet, in fact, during the first year after 
its passage, more persons were seized as fugitive 
slaves than in the preceding sixty years. This 
statement, however, does not imply so much as it 
seems to. From many of the New England States 
no slave had ever been taken back, and, except 
from Massachusetts, not one from any of them for 
at least a quarter of a century. There was, even 
so early as February, 1851, some foundation for 
the complaint that bad faith threw all kinds of 
difficulties in the way of the recovery of fugitives, 



102 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

often increasing the cost to the full value of the 
slave. Charges of this kind became doubtless 
more and more true as time went on and the con- 
stantly growing hostility to the law continually 
invented new and fresh obstacles to its speedy and 
peaceful execution. There were other rescues, and 
an occasional murder either of pursuers or pur- 
sued, or the killing by a mother of her children 
that they might not be sent back to slavery. These, 
with some kidnappings, and the not infrequent re- 
turn to slavery, under the summary processes of 
the law, of free colored persons, kept alive the pub- 
lic feeling, and tended slowly to consolidate into a 
new party the plain people of the Northern States, 
who did not live by commerce or manufactures, 
and had no direct dealings or intercourse with the 
South. 

Even in Congress there was a certain recogni- 
tion of the fact that the finality of the compro- 
mises might be questioned. Before the end of 
January, 1851, forty-four senators and representa- 
tives of different political parties, with Clay him- 
self at their head, thought it advisable to publish a 
manifesto, declaring that they would support no 
man for office who did not condemn any disturb- 
ance of the compromises or agitation of the slav- 
ery question. Yet congressional action on this 
subject was not always consistent with what this 
declaration implied. Only a few days later a bill 
to construe the Fugitive Slave Law so as to increase 
its rigor was introduced into the Senate, and at 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION 103 

once referred to a committee, while petitions for 
its repeal were refused such reference, and imme- 
diately laid on the table. Yet even as to these 
the rule was not uniform, such a petition presented 
by Seward being summarily disposed of, while 
similar petitions presented by senators from Maine 
and Pennsylvania were appropriately referred. 

In a short speech on this matter, Seward, allud- 
ing to the charge of being an agitator, said : " I 
am one of the members of this body who have 
been content with the debates which were had 
when this subject came legitimately before us in 
the form of bills requiring debate. I have never 
spoken on the subject since those bills became 
laws. I have been content to leave those measures 
to the scrutiny of the people, and the test of time 
and truth. I have added no codicils and have 
none to add, to vary, enforce or explain what I 
had occasion to say during the debates." 

This declaration was true, and his conduct in 
this matter eminently characteristic. He was no 
agitator for agitation's sake. He recognized the 
fact that the country was for the moment worn out 
with discussion, that it was hopeless to attempt to 
rouse the people by declamation, and that only 
concrete facts of wrong and outrage, which he felt 
sure would not fail to occur, could do this. 

There were other subjects besides slavery dis- 
cussed in the session of 1850-51, — a French Spoli- 
ation Bill, which Seward supported in an elaborate 
speech, the improvement of rivers and harbors, the 



104 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

disposition of the public lands, and changes in our 
postal system. In his views on this last subject, 
Seward was distinctly a reformer, and in advance 
of the times. He could not secure cheap postage ; 
but it was to his exertions at this session that we 
owe our street letter-boxes and the first attempt at 
delivery by letter-carriers in the cities and towns. 

The summer of 1851 saw the opening of the 
Erie Railway to the Lakes ; the President and 
many of his cabinet and Seward with them made 
an excursion over the whole length of the road, 
and there were banquets and speeches and fire- 
works and all the other festivities common to such 
occasions. To the " Silver Greys," the Whigs who 
had indorsed the administration and the compro- 
mises, the chief of the " Woolly Heads " must have 
seemed an undesirable addition to the presidential 
party on this prolonged excursion ; and Seward 
himself felt that there might be some embarrass- 
ment from his presence. But the construction of 
this railway had been one of his early and con- 
stantly cherished projects, and he would have been 
reluctant to miss "the wedding of the Lakes to 
the salt sea with the ring of well wrought iron." 
This was his holiday for the year ; he spent the 
rest of his summer in the trial of an important and 
fatigfuino^ criminal case. 

Both sessions of the thirty-second Congress 
(December, 1851, to March 4, 1853) were in 
striking contrast to those of the previous one. In- 
stead of stormy discussion, hard feelings, bitter 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION 105 

words, and unbecoming personalities, there were 
courtesy, fair debate, and general kindliness and 
good feeling. In the opening days of the first 
session, resolutions were introduced in the Senate 
affirming the finality of the compromise measures ; 
but the discussion of these, except in a single 
instance, was carried on between the Southern 
senators, and the resolutions themselves were never 
pressed to a vote. In Mississippi, where the issue 
had been distinctly raised between secession or the 
Union with compromises, Foote, the compromise 
Union candidate, was elected governor over Jeffer- 
son Davis, the nominee of the pronounced Seces- 
sionists. A South Carolina convention, called to 
promote the cause of disunion, collapsed ; and, so 
far as the South was concerned, it was evident 
that no further concessions to the slaveholding 
interests were to be asked for at present. At the 
North the number of cases under the Fugitive 
Slave Law seemed to diminish. There was conse- 
quently less general excitement about it, though 
there were occasional bursts of indignation, when 
the popular passions in some locality broke out in 
a flame ; but the flame never spread into a con- 
flagration, and the elections in 1852 showed that, 
on the whole, public opinion was inclined to abide 
by the compromise measures and not to disturb 
them. 

The event of the winter (1851-52) which prin- 
cipally excited Congress and the country was the 
visit of Kossuth and his companions, who had 



106 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

been leaders in the Hungarian insurrection of 
1848. The efforts of the Hungarians to establish 
a republic had seemed on the point of success, 
when the forces which Eussia sent the Austrian 
emperor at his request, joined to his own army, 
enabled him to crush the rebellion. The Czar, 
who had refused to aid Austria so long as the 
Hungarians were merely seeking reforms, justified 
his interference when they had undertaken to form 
a republic, upon the ground that "the internal 
security of his empire was menaced by what was 
passing and preparing in Hungary." Upon their 
final defeat, Kossuth and other Hungarians escaped 
to Turkey. The Sultan, supported by England, 
refused to surrender them ; and the Congress of 
the United States, acting on the belief that these 
refugees wished to leave Europe forever, and to 
seek new homes here, gave them passage to this 
country in a national vessel. Kossuth, however, 
leaving the ship at Gibraltar, went directly to 
England, where he was received with an enthusiasm 
which grew day by day. During his visit there 
he put before the people in public addresses of 
marvelous eloquence, tinged with Oriental thought 
and fancy, and clothed in the language of Shake- 
speare, the only English he knew, vivid pictures of 
the wrongs and oppression of his country. He 
made it evident that it was his purpose to induce 
both Great Britain and the United States to ac- 
knowledge that it was their duty to protest against 
the action of any state which should assist another 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION 107 

to put down an Insurrection ; and although he did 
not expressly say so, he evidently expected them 
to be prepared, if necessary, to support their pro- 
tests by force. As an earnest of their assent to 
this principle, he wished Great Britain and the 
United States each to put on record its official and 
public condemnation of the recent intervention of 
Russia in the affairs of Hungary, and his hope 
was, under cover of this declaration, to start a 
fresh insurrection there with a better prospect of 
success. 

After a short stay in England, he sailed for 
New York, where he was to arrive early in Decem- 
ber. On the very day that Congress assembled in 
that month, a resolution was introduced in the 
Senate, at the instance, it was said, of the secretary 
of state, providing for the welcome and reception 
of the Hungarian patriots. It was expected to 
pass at once and unanimously, but it was opposed, 
and was therefore not pressed. A substitute, of- 
fered by Seward, simply giving Kossuth " a cordial 
welcome to the capital and the country," was 
adopted by both houses after some debate. The 
small minority against it consisted, with a single 
exception, of Southerners, whose opposition to the 
resolve, as one of them declared, " had been guided 
solely by sensitiveness on the subject of slavery." 
Some Southerners, whose sympathies had been 
excited for the defeated leaders of an unsuccessful 
rising in a remote land, and who had been quite 
ready to invite them here as " exiles broken in 



108 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

heart and fortune," desirous only " to spend their 
remaining days in obscure industry," were quick 
to take alarm when they found Kossuth preaching 
a crusade in favor of freedom and the rights of 
men, and when they witnessed the effect of his 
fervid appeals upon all classes of persons at the 
North. For it was not merely the more impres- 
sionable and uncritical masses who were carried 
away by his eloquence ; but grave professors, schol- 
ars, and men of letters, the intelligent, refined, 
and fastidious people ot the land were equally 
moved by him ; and the slaveholders not unrea- 
sonably apprehended that the quickened sense of 
the wrongs of a people suffering under the yoke 
of a despotism, might intensify and deepen the 
growing conviction at the North of the greater 
wrongs and sufferings of a people borne down 
by the still heavier yoke of slavery. The fact 
that the most earnest anti-slavery leaders were 
among the most ardent of Kossuth's admirers 
naturally tended to increase these apprehensions. 
Kossuth made a tour of the South ; but though 
he preserved a discreet silence on the subject of 
slavery, his speeches failed to awaken there any 
interest for Hungary. 

Some of the men in public life undoubtedly 
used the Hungarian question for political pur- 
poses ; but Seward took it up in dead earnest. He 
offered in the Senate a resolution which denounced 
the conduct of Russia in invading Hungary with- 
out just right, in subverting there the constitution 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION 109 

established by the people, and reducing the country 
to the condition of a province ruled by a foreign 
power ; and which further declared that the United 
States, in defense of their own interests and of the 
common interests of mankind, protested against 
this conduct of Russia, as a wanton and tyrannical 
infraction of the law of nations, and would not in 
future be indifferent to any similar acts of national 
injustice, oppression, or usurpation, wherever they 
might occur. In a very earnest and elaborate 
speech he urged the passage of this resolve. He 
admitted that it would have been better had we 
made our protest before the final defeat and sur- 
render of the Hungarians ; but thought this of the 
less consequence as the surrender was quite recent, 
and there was some prospect of a new rising in 
Hungary, which made the protest important and 
seasonable.^ We had an interest in making this 
protest, he said, as one of the family of nations, 
and so deeply concerned in their general welfare 
that it was not merely our right but our duty to 
do this. 

Nor did he see any real objection to it. A pro- 
test was "not a declaration, nor a menace, nor 
even a pledge of war in any contingency." It 

^ The final defeat and surrender of the Hungarians was Au- 
gust 10-13, 1849. This speech was delivered March 9, 1852. As 
neither this country nor England gave Hungary official encourage- 
ment there was never any later outbreak. The ninety thousand 
dollars ($90,000) raised in this country by subscription, for the 
Hungarian cause, was all spent for the benefit of those who came 
over here. 



'\ 



110 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

was only " a remonstrance addressed to the con- 
science of Russia, and an appeal to the reason and 
justice of mankind. By the law of nations," he 
argued, " no remonstrance justifies a war." If 
war should come, the protest would be not a 
cause, but a " pretext," and " in a defensive war 
levied against us on such a pretext we should be 
unconquerable." If Hungary should never rise, 
there would be no casus belli, and if she should do 
so, we should have the right to choose our own 
time for recognizing her. He found in our civil 
reply to Louis XVI.'s announcement of the forma- 
tion of the French constitution of 1791, an infer- 
ential protest against the foreign intervention then 
organized beyond the Rhine, although the reply 
was absolutely silent on this point ; and he dis- 
covered further protests of the same kind in the 
friendly official messages sent to the Committee of 
Safety of the first French republic. 

Washington's policy of avoiding entangling alli- 
ances with European countries Seward admitted 
to have been wise and necessary in its day ; but 
he argued that this policy was not intended or 
adapted for all time ; that Monroe's course as 
to the Holy Alliance and the South American 
republics was a departure from it; and that his 
later expression of sympathy with Greece towards 
the close of her long struggle for independence was 
inconsistent with it. He spoke with pride of the 
instant, though unauthorized, recognition by our 
own minister of the French republic of 1848, as 



^ 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION 111 

showing the trend of our political relations and 
influence with the countries of Europe ; and he 
insisted that the resolve he offered was no greater 
intervention (if it were intervention at all), than 
what we had done " in every contest for freedom 
and humanity throughout the world since we be- 
came a nation." 

Seward had, in fact, found no precedent for any 
such protest, in any act of our foreign policy as to 
the domestic difficulties of any European state. 
The diplomatic history of the country afforded no 
such precedent. The speech was one in which his 
sympathies got the better of his reason. It advo- 
cated a meddlesome foreign policy, inconsistent 
with the position, the interests, and the prosperity 
of the United States. Had his resolution been 
adopted, it would have been a new departure, at 
variance with the established practice and tradi- 
tions of this country, and ten years later might 
have been relied on by the countries of Europe to 
justify a more active interference with our course 
in crushing the Southern rebellion. The sober 
sense of Congress saved us from the possible con- 
sequences of Seward's rash and quixotic proposal. 

In forming the standing committees of the Sen- 
ate, in the Congress which met in December, 1851, 
Seward was made a member of that on commerce. 
This broug-ht him into more familiar relations with 
other senators, and gave him plenty of congenial 
work. He was always a believer in the develop- 
ment of the country, upon the lines of the policy 



112 WILLIAIkl HENRY SEWARD 

of the Whig i^arty, and his place on this committee 
made more effective his endeavors to foster by 
legislation our domestic and foreign commerce. 
He advocated government aid to two lines of At- 
lantic steamers, to the ship canal round the Sault 
Saint Marie, and to railroads in various parts of 
the country, declared himself " out and out " in 
favor of a railway across the continent, while for 
the benefit of our whalers and ti-ade in the Pacific 
he strenuously urged a government survey of that 
ocean. 

In the second session of this Congress there 
were no political debates. When the presidential 
conventions met, both parties inserted in their 
platforms an indorsement of the finality of the 
compromises. That of the Democrats was explicit, 
and adopted unanimously ; that of the Whigs, 
though more qualified, was opposed by one fourth 
of the delegates. 

In the Democratic convention the struggle for 
the nomination was long : the party leaders, Cass, 
Marcy, and Buchanan, were all at last abandoned, 
and Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, who had 
seen some public service both in the House and 
Senate and been a general in the Mexican war, 
secured the nomination. 

Among the Whigs, Scott was the candidate of 
the opponents of the compromises of 1850 ; Fill- 
more and Webster, of those who supported these 
compromises. On the first ballot in the conven- 
tion Webster received only twenty-nine votes, while 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION 113 

Fillmore had a hundred and thirty-one, — enough 
with Webster's twenty-nine to have given him the 
nomination. The conservative Northern and the 
Southern Whigs had together a majority of the 
convention, and the indorsement of the finality of 
the compromise measures, including the Fugitive 
Slave Law, was not unexpected. Indeed the out- 
come of the convention was but another compro- 
mise, a last attempt of the Whigs to preserve their 
character as a national party. The anti-slavery 
Whigs of the North secured the nomination, the 
South the platform. Seward was disheartened. 
" The North, the free States," he wrote, " are 
divided as usual, the South united. Intimidation, 
usual in that quarter, has been met, as usual, by 
concession, and so the platform adopted is one that 
deprives Scott of the vantage of position he en- 
joyed. ... I anticipate defeat and desertion." He 
was so discouraged as to feel weary of his position 
and that he should be glad to get out of it. This 
feeling continued throughout the summer. " When 
will there be a North ? " he asks ; and says again : 
" I still remain strongly inclined to give up this 
place and public life. If the state Whig conven- 
tion adopt the platform, I think I shall be justified 
in resigning at once." 

The result of the election confirmed his forecast. 
Pierce received two hundred and fifty-four electoral 
votes from twenty-seven States, while General 
Scott had only the votes of Vermont, Massachu- 
setts, Kentucky, and Tennessee, forty-two in all. 



114 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

Pierce's plurality over Scott on the popular vote 
was more than two hundred thousand, and his 
majority over all candidates nearly sixty thousand. 
So far as the election had any political significance, 
it showed that the Southerners believed the Demo- 
crats more subservient than the Whigs to the slave- 
holding interests ; while it also indicated that the 
majority of the Northern voters were weary of anti- 
slavery agitation, and had accepted the compromise 
measures as a solution of all difficulties, and as 
the finality which the platforms of both parties 
asserted them to be. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 

President Pierce's first message, delivered on 
the 5th of December, 1853, called attention to the 
" sense of repose and security in the public mind," 
and gave assurance that this repose should suffer 
no shock if he had power to avert it. There can 
be no doubt that, at the time he said this, the Pre- 
sident had not the slightest foreboding of the rude 
shock which this repose was at once, with his own 
assent and support, to receive at the hands of his 
own party. 

The Louisiana purchase, the territory acquired 
from France by the Treaty of 1803, extending 
west from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, 
first brought into our politics the disturbing factor 
of the extension of slavery ; all our previous hold- 
ings being free under the Ordinance of 1787. 
After a sharp contest the question of freedom or 
slavery in this territory was settled by a compro- 
mise, by which Missouri was admitted as a slave 
State ; and in all the rest of the territory slavery 
was to be allowed south of 36° 30', while north of 
this latitude it was forever prohibited. 

By this bargain between the sections, the South 



116 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

secured all the rich and fertile lands from the 
mouth of the Mississippi to the northern border 
of Missouri, and left to the North the uninhab- 
ited regions beyond, which were abandoned to the 
hunter and trapper, or gradually given over to 
Indian reservations. In 1836, Missouri obtained 
leave of Congress to extend her boundaries west- 
ward to the Missouri River, and thus more than 
three thousand square miles, which the Compromise 
had made free, became slave territory. Aside 
from this, however, the Missouri Compromise had 
remained practically unquestioned from its passage 
in March, 1820, until the year 1853, and had been 
regarded as hardly less sacred and binding than 
the Constitution itself. But the South had now 
reaped the full benefit of all it had secured by the 
bargain ; and the inhabitants of the southwestern 
counties of Missouri, with their twenty-five thou- 
sand slaves, were looking with covetous eyes upon 
the fair lands of Kansas, lying just beyond their 
own borders. 

Several attempts had been made to secure from 
Congress an act for the organization of a territorial 
government, in conformity with the provisions of 
the Missouri Compromise ; but they had all been 
defeated by Southern votes, ostensibly upon the 
ground that this Territory could not be opened to 
settlement without interference with Indian reser- 
vations secured by solemn treaties. Within ten 
days after the delivery of the President's message, 
with its promise of repose, a similar bill was intro- 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 117 

duced into the Senate and referred to the Com- 
mittee on Territories, of which Stephen A. Douglas 
of Illinois was chairman. Three weeks later the 
committee returned it with amendments, accom- 
panied by an elaborate report, in which it was said 
that it was a disputed point whether the Compro- 
mise prohibiting slavery in this Territory was a 
valid enactment ; eminent statesmen holding that 
Congress had no authority to legislate as to slavery 
in the Territories, that the Constitution secured to 
every citizen an inalienable right to move into any 
Territory with any property, including slaves, and 
to have the same protected by law, and that any 
legislation interfering with or restricting this right 
was null and void. The committee added that 
they did not recommend any legislation either 
affirming or repealing the Missouri Compromise, 
or declaring the meaning of the Constitution upon 
this disputed question ; but then went on to say 
that the compromise measures of 1850 rested upon 
the proposition that all questions pertaining to slav- 
ery in the Territories, or in the States to be formed 
therefrom, should be left to the decision of the 
people residing therein. 

The purpose and effect of this report did not 
escape the notice of the vigilant anti-slavery press 
of the North.^ Nor was the hint at its close wholly 
lost on the South. On the 16th of January, a 
Southern senator gave notice of an amendment 

^ New York Evening Post, January 7, 1854 ; Tribune, January 
11 ; Independent, January 7. 



118 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

repealing so much of the Missouri Compromise as 
prohibited slavery in this Territory, and providing 
that slaves might be taken there as if that act had 
never been passed. A week later, after a Simday's 
conference with the President, in which Pierce at 
last yielded to the argiunents and persuasion of 
Jefferson Davis and Douglas, Douglas again re- 
ported the bill from his committee, and now there 
was no uncertainty as to its meaning. It created 
two Territories, Kansas the southern one, and north 
of this Nebraska. It provided that slavery in these 
Territories should be left to the decision of the 
people there, and declared the Missouri Compro- 
mise inconsistent with the principle of the acts of 
1850 and therefore inoperative and void. The bill 
in this shape passed the Senate by a vote of thirty- 
seven yeas to fourteen nays, — all the Southerners, 
of whatever party, except Bell of Tennessee and 
Houston of Texas, voting for it, and only four 
Northern Democrats against it.^ 

When Douglas reported his bill he readily 
granted its opponents a week's delay before it 
shoidd be brought up for discussion. In this 
interval there was published the address of the 
" Independent Democrats," in which the whole 
history of the growth and development of the bill 
was exposed, the report attacked, and a strenuous 
effort made to rouse the people of the North to 
a sense of the wrong attempted to be done them, 

^ Seven Whigs including Bell, five Democrats including Hous- 
ton, -with Chase and Sumner, Independents, made up the minority. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 119 

and of the threatened danger to freedom. This 
address was signed by Chase and Sumner of the 
Senate and three members of the House. Seward 
did not sign it, and it is obvious that he could not 
have done so. He was not an Independent Demo- 
erat ; he was a Whig, and there was no reason for 
his signing it which did not apply equally to the 
other anti-slavery Whigs in the Senate, — Fessen- 
den, Foote, Fish, Smith, and Wade, none of whom 
put their names to it. 

When the day for the debate arrived, Douglas 
assuming that the delay had been asked to gain 
time to stir up sectional agitation at the North, 
made a savage attack on Chase and Sumner, the 
senators responsible for this manifesto, and on 
them, for the time, came the brunt of the battle 
against the biU. Before its final passage Seward 
made two speeches upon it. It was a case, how- 
ever, where discussion was useless. Douglas had 
brought the bill to its final shape, providing for 
the organization of two Territories with no restric- 
tion as to slavery, because (if we are to take his 
own explanation) he thought some organization of 
these Territories a pressing necessity, and was satis- 
fied that the South would assent to no other plan. 

The Southerners were perfectly weU aware of 
what they were doing. They knew that they were 
breaking a bargain of which they had reaped the 
advantage, and they were at bottom quite indif- 
ferent to the charges of bad faith and to all the 
reproaches heaped upon them. They expected to 



120 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

gain an immediate substantial advantage for slav- 
ery, and did not mind the exposure of the flimsy 
and shifting pretexts which they offered in justi- 
fication of their conduct. They had the united 
Southern vote, which was pro-slavery and " knew 
no Whiggery and no Democracy where slavery 
was concerned ; " and they could rely on a suf- 
ficient number of Northern Democrats to carry any 
measure on which they had determined. To the 
Senate, therefore, argument was vain, and invectives 
and personalities were useful only to relieve the 
mind of the speaker. Whatever was said was a 
mere protest, unavailing where it was spoken. " We 
were only a few here," said Seward, " engaged in 
the cause of freedom in the beginning of this con- 
test. All that we could hope to do was to organize 
and prepare the issue for the House of Represen- 
tatives, and awaken the country." 

Seward's first speech was a simple but exhaus- 
tive statement of the whole question in all its 
bearings, entirely free from personalities, and with 
little rhetorical adornment. Its tone was one of 
great calmness, and its calmness made it all the 
more effective. It has been described as a lawyer's 
argument. If it were so, the jury to whom it was 
addressed was the people of the United States, and 
its effect upon them was all that Seward himself 
could have desired. 

" His words were listened to not only by his fol- 
lowers in New York, but they had a marked influ- 
ence on all the anti-slavery Whigs in the country. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 121 

The speech was translated into German, and exten- 
sively circulated among the Germans of western 
Texas. It probably affected the minds of more 
men than any speech delivered on that side of this 
question in Congress." ^ Having stated the history 
of the acquisition of the territory and of the pas- 
sage of the Compromise bill, which had secured it 
to freedom, the " universal acceptance of this mea- 
sure by both parties for more than thirty years, as 
a conclusive arrangement, its confirmation over 
and over again by many acts of successive Con- 
gresses, and the fact that the slaveholding States 
had received the full benefit of what the Compro- 
mise secured them, while the non-slaveholding 
States had practically enjoyed nothing under it," 
Seward went on to consider the nature of the ques- 
tion and the momentous consequences depending 
upon its decision. " It was no abstraction that 
had brought the Compromise into being. Slavery 
and freedom were then active antagonists, seek- 
ing for ascendency in the Union ; and the contest 
between them had since that day been merely pro- 
tracted — not decided. By holding fast to the 
Compromise, the occupation of the land by free- 
men, with free labor, would be secured forever ; by 
abrogating it, this vast region was to be abandoned 
to the chances of slavery, which no one could fore- 
tell." He announced his conviction that if ever 
the slaveholding States should " multiply them- 
selves and extend their sphere, so that they could, 
1 Rhodes's Hist. U. S. i. pp. 453, 454. 



122 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

without association with the non-slaveholding States, 
constitute of themselves a commercial republic, 
from that day their rule would be such as would 
be hard for the non-slaveholding States to bear ; 
and their pride and ambition would consent to no 
union in which they should not so rule." 

Notwithstanding the compromise measures of 
1850, Seward's observation and his natural opti- 
mism had made him hopeful that anti-slavery 
opinion was gaining ground, and the country 
making slow progress, with occasional drawbacks, 
towards the gradual and peaceful emancipation 
which he ardently desired. The introduction of 
Douglas's original bill at this session of Congress, 
and the support which it at once received from 
Northern Democrats, were a rude shock to this 
hope ; and Seward's letters at this time are full of 
gloomy forebodings. He wrote home : — 

"Douglas has introduced a bill for organizing 
the Nebraska territory, going as far as the Demo- 
crats dare towards abolishing that provision of the 
Missouri Compromise which devoted all the new 
regions north of 36° 30' to freedom. 

" I am heart-sick of being here. I look around 
me in the Senate, and find all demoralized. Maine, 
New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Ver- 
mont ! ! ! All, all in the hand of the slaveholders ; 
and even New York ready to howl at my heels, if 
I were only to name the name of freedom, which 
once they loved so much." ^ 

^ January 4, 1854. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 123 

To an invitation to a meeting in New York to 
protest against the bill, he replied: "Nebraska is 
not all that is to be saved or lost ; we who thought, 
only so lately as 1849, of securing some portion at 
least of the Gulf of Mexico and all the Pacific 
coast to the institutions of freedom, shall be, before 
1857, brought to a doubtful struggle to prevent 
the extension of slavery to the shores of the Great 
Lakes and Puget Sound." ^ And as the vote was 
about to be taken in the Senate, before sending 
the bill to the House, he wrote again : " Heaven 
be thanked that since this cup of humiliation can- 
not be passed, the struggle of draining it is nearly 
over. . . . This triumph of slavery, the greatest 
and the worst, is the consummation of thirty-four 
years of compromise." ^ 

In Mr. Welles's " Lincoln and Seward," which 
was written rather from a controversial than a 
historical point of view, he prints a letter from 
Mr. Montgomery Blair, in which Mr. Blair says : 
" I shall never forget how shocked I was at 
Seward's telling me that he was the man who put 
Archie Dixon, the Whig senator from Kentucky 
in 1854, up to moving the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise as an amendment to Douglas's first 
Kansas bill ; and had himself forced the repeal by 
that movement, and had thus brought to life the 
Republican party. Dixon was to out-Herod Herod 
at the South, and he would out-Herod Herod at 
the North. He did not contemplate what followed. 
1 January 28, 1854. 2 March 3, 1854. 



124 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

He did not believe in the reality of the passions he 
excited, because he felt none himself. He thought 
it all a harmless game for power." This statement 
of Mr. Blair's, though apparently relied on by 
some careful writers, seems to show so great forget- 
f ulness or ignorance of historical facts, or such a 
reckless disregard of them, as greatly to impair, if 
not wholly to destroy its claim to serious considera- 
tion ; but as a malignant posthumous attack on 
Seward, it justifies, if it does not require, even at 
the risk of repetition, some notice here. 

The principal historical facts, which dispose of 
Mr. Blair's charge that Seward forced the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise by putting up Dixon 
of Kentucky to move it, are as follows : early in 
December, 1853, Dodge of Wisconsin introduced 
into the Senate a bill for organizing into one Ter- 
ritory, to be called Nebraska, the whole country 
stretching west from Missouri to Oregon and Utah. 
All this region had been declared free by the 
Missouri Compromise, and Dodge's bill assumed 
this to be constitutional and still in force, unaf- 
fected by any subsequent legislation. His bill 
was referred to the Committee on Territories, of 
which Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was chair- 
man, and that committee, on the 4th of January, 
1854, reported the bill in a new draft, or, to speak 
accurately, substituted for Dodge's bill one of 
their own. They also submitted an elaborate 
report, in which they said that " it was disputed 
whether the law prohibiting slavery in Nebraska 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 125 

was valid ; that there was involved in it the ques- 
tion whether Congress had the constitutional power 
to regulate the domestic institutions of the Terri- 
tories, — the same issue which produced the strug- 
gle of 1850, — that they thought it wise not to 
depart from the course pursued at that time, and 
would not recommend either affirming or repealing 
the Missouri Compromise, or the passage of any 
act declaratory of the meaning of the Constitution 
on this point." Nevertheless their bill, when it 
first appeared in print as an act of twenty sections, 
on the 7th of January, 1854, contained provisions 
borrowed from the laws organizing Utah and New 
Mexico, by which, whenever this or any part of 
this new Territory should be admitted as a State, 
its admission should take place without regard to 
the fact that its constitution permitted or pro- 
hibited slavery. This provision was a violation of 
the spirit, if not also of the letter, of the Missouri 
Compromise, and an application to this Territory 
of the doctrine of squatter sovereignty as estab- 
lished by the compromise measures of 1850. 

Three days later (January 10, 1854), there was 
printed an additional section (the twenty-first), 
said to have been omitted by a mistake of the 
copyist in the original draft of the biU. This sec- 
tion contained several paragraphs. It declared 
that it was the intent of the act, so far as slavery 
was concerned, to carry into effect the principles 
established by the compromise measures of 1850 ; 
and specified as the first of these principles that 



/ 



126 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

" all questions pertaining to slavery in tlie Terri- 
tories, and in the new States to be formed there- 
from, are to be left to the decision of the people 
residing therein, through their appropriate repre- 
sentatives." If there had previously been any 
doubt as to the purpose and effect of Douglas's 
bill, this new section made its scope and object 
perfectly clear ; and Douglas was quite right when 
he said at a later date that " the bill, in the shape 
in which it was at first reported, as effectually 
repealed the Missouri restriction as it did when 
the repeal was put in express terms." The country 
understood the bill in this way, and leading news- 
papers at once exposed its character, 

Seward so understood it, and before the 10th of 
January (the day when the additional section first 
appeared) had written of it as " this infamous 
Nebraska bill, an administration move ; " and 
called attention to its clause protecting Indians in 
their rights of property, which he declared to be 
" an equivoque to cover the slaves the Indians own, 
and so sanction slavery by implication." He had 
also written as to meetings and legislative resolu- 
tions to remonstrate against it, and expressed a 
hope that Clayton might be induced " to lead an 
opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promisey ^ 

On the 16th of January, eight days after the 
date of this letter, Archibald Dixon of Kentucky, 
who had been elected to the Senate as a Whig, 

^ Letters, January 8, 1854. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 127 

but who openly declared that upon the question 
of slavery he knew no Whiggery and no Demo- 
cracy, that he was a pro-slavery man, was from 
a slaveholding constituency, and was there to 
maintain their rights, gave notice of an amend- 
ment which he proposed to offer, expressly re- 
pealing so much of the Missouri Compromise as 
prohibited slavery in this new Territory. Sumner 
on the next day proposed an amendment of an 
exactly opposite character. The bill was recom- 
mitted ; the following week Douglas reported it 
substantially as it was finally passed ; and we find 
Seward writing to his wife : " The great news of 
the day I suppose you have anticipated. The 
' Hards,' finding fault with Douglas's equivocations 
in his first bill, insisted on the repeal of the Mis- 
souri Compromise. Douglas conferred last Sun- 
day with the cabinet ; and the matter resulted in 
a unanimous agreement to concede the demand, 
and to put the bill right through, before the coun- 
try could be aroused, and so silence agitation of 
freedom by leaving no more for slavery to demand. 
I shall not speculate yet on the consequences." 

The course of events in the Senate and the ac- 
counts contained in these letters correspond with 
one another. Douglas meant to repeal the prohi- 
bition of slavery contained in the Missouri Com- 
promise, but hoped to do it indirectly, in such a 
way as to satisfy the South without rousing the 
attention or exciting the opposition of the North. 
He made two attempts for this purpose, — the 



128 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

second (by the restoration of the suppressed 
twenty-first section) more explicit than the first. 
But the friends of freedom had seen his object 
from the beginning ; they believed, as he did, that 
he had accomplished it in his original bill, and at 
once began to endeavor to rouse public opinion 
at the North. The Southern slaveholders and 
the Northern pro-slavery Democrats (the Hards) 
would not, however, be satisfied with anything 
less than a direct repeal in clear language. They 
persuaded the President to assent to this course, 
and Douglas reported his final bill. Dixon's mo- 
tion was an incident of no special importance. 
Before it was made the committee had determined 
that their bill should open the Territory to slavery, 
and believed that it had done so in the way to at- 
tract least attention. The South insisted on more 
explicit language on this point, and the committee 
yielded to their persistence. The final shape of 
the bill, proposing the organization of two Terri- 
tories instead of one, may have been expected to 
facilitate its passage, as it left room for the argu- 
ment that there was to be a division between the 
North and the South, as often before, and that 
though Kansas, which was next Missouri, would 
be a slave State, yet Nebraska was not likely to 
be so. Nebraska it was then quite safe to talk 
about, as its only denizens were Indians on their 
reservations, and our hunters and the game they 
were pursuing ; and there was no immediate pro- 
spect of any more stable population. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 129 

What Seward actually said to Mr. Blair, which 
enabled him to make the statement he has printed, 
can never be known, since Mr. Blair, however 
shocked he was, never mentioned the matter dur- 
ing Seward's lifetime, when Seward might have 
explained or denied it, but reserved it for an at- 
tack on him after his death. To any one who has 
studied Seward's life, the suggestion that in his 
opposition to the extension of slavery he was play- 
ing a part in " a harmless game for power," is 
simply absurd. Slavery was abhorrent to him 
from his early experience in Georgia. Later in 
life he abandoned a journey in Virginia because 
the daily contact with slavery was so repulsive to 
him. He believed it a moral wrong and a politi- 
cal mistake, and his whole course in politics rested 
upon this conviction. The substance and the tone 
of the letters we have quoted, his whole corre- 
spondence at the time, and his speech on the 
Kansas-Nebraska bill are absolutely inconsistent 
with his having " put up Dixon " to moving the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise. There were 
no confidential relations between Seward and Mr. 
Blair which would have naturally led Seward to 
make him the sole depositary of this secret ; Blair 
himself had no such tender regard for Seward's 
reputation as would have caused him to hesitate 
for an instant to speak of this, if, at the time, he 
really understood what he at last brought himself 
to state in this letter. There were in Congress, 
when the Kansas-Nebraska bill was under discus- 



130 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

sion, many of its opponents who did not like, or 
always agree with, Seward, and who did not shrink 
from criticising him, or saying sharp and unplea- 
sant things about him. If there were any back- 
ground of facts to warrant Mr. Blair's charges, we 
may be quite sure that some rumor of them would 
have been then circulating in Washington, and 
that we should not have waited till twenty years 
after the events happened, when all the actors were 
dead, before hearing this story for the first time. 
Nor, if there were any foundation for Mr. Blair's 
charge against him, if he had any share in Dixon's 
motion, could Seward himself, when the facts were 
fresh, and when the evidence to convict him of 
falsehood, if what he was stating were untrue, was 
right at hand, have written as he did in the letters 
we have quoted, or have publicly said in a speech 
on this very bill : " The shifting sands of compro- 
mise are passing from under my feet, and they are 
now, without agency of my ow7i, taking hold again 
on the rock of the Constitution." 

In the House of Representatives there was more 
opposition to the bill; there seemed a possibility 
of its defeat, and more than a possibility of some 
amendments unacceptable to the slaveholders. But 
it was at last forced through, without material 
changes, by the parliamentary skill and the un- 
hesitating audacity of Alexander H. Stephens of 
Georgia, who succeeded most ingeniously in cut- 
ting off all possible amendments and stopping ail 
debate. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 131 

A change, which the Southerners were prepared 
to accept, made it necessary to return the bill to 
the Senate, that it might be put on its final pas- 
sage there. It was on the night before this final 
vote was taken that Seward made his second 
speech ; and the despondency betrayed in his cor- 
respondence is even more manifest here. 

" The sun has set," he began, " for the last time 
on the guaranteed and certain liberties of all the 
unsettled and unorganized portions of the United 
States. To-morrow's sun will rise in dim eclipse 
over them. How long that obstruction shall last 
is known only to the Power that directs and con- 
trols all human events. For myself, I know only 
this, that no human power will prevent its coming 
on, and that its passing off will be hastened and 
secured by others than those now here, and per- 
haps only by those belonging to future generations. 
. . . By the passage of this bill, freedom will en- 
dure a severe, though, I hope, not an irretrievable 

loss The slave States are in earnest in 

seeking for and securing an object, and an impor- 
tant one. I do not know how long the advantage 
gained will last, nor how great and comprehensive 
it will be. . . . There is suspended on the issue of 
this contest the political equilibrium between the 
free and the slave States. It is no idle question, 
whether slavery shall go on increasing its influence 
over the central power here, or whether freedom 
shall gain the ascendency. ... I believe that, if 
ever the greater ascendency of the slave power 



132 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

shall come, the voice of freedom will cease to be 
heard in these halls, whatever may be the evils and 
dangers which slavery shall produce. . . . When 
freedom of speech on a subject of such vital inter- 
est shall have ceased to exist in Congress, then I 
shall expect to see slavery not only luxuriating in all 
new Territories, but stealthily creeping into the free 
States themselves. Believing this, ... I am sure 
that this will be no longer a land of freedom and 
constitutional liberty, when slavery shall have thus 
become paramount." It was, therefore, rather with 
the courage of despair than with the confidence of 
hope that he said : " Come on, then, gentlemen 
of the slave States. Since there is no escaping 
your challenge, I accept it in behalf of the cause of 
freedom. We will engage in competition for the 
virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to 
the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in 
right." 

The only gleam of satisfaction that he could see 
came from his conviction that the so-called final 
arrangements with the South, made only to be 
broken, were forever at an end. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 

The vote on the Nebraska bill again demon- 
strated that all questions touching the interests of 
slavery lay outside of the creeds of parties and the 
ties of party associations. The disintegration of 
the Whig party seemed inevitable. Every North- 
ern Whig, in either House or Senate, voted against 
the bill ; while of the Southern Whigs, twenty-one 
voted for it and only eight against it. Among the 
Democrats the sectional lines were not so sharply 
drawn ; fifty -eight Northern Democrats voted for 
the bill, and forty-eight against it ; while from the 
South but three voted against it, fifty-eight for it. 

From the Northern Democracy, as an anti-slav- 
ery party, there was nothing to be hoped, and the 
people as well as the politicians were discussing 
whether it was more advisable to make a fight 
against slavery under the Whig name and organ- 
ization at the North, or to form a new party. 
Already, before the passage of the bill, there had 
been meetings in Wisconsin to consider a fusion of 
the Whigs, Free Soilers, and anti-slavery Demo- 
crats into a new party, for which the name " Re- 
publican " had been suggested. The day after the 



134 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

passage of the bill some thirty members of Con- 
gress agreed together upon the necessity for a new 
party, and adopted the same name ; and in the 
smnmer there were in several States, under varying 
forms, fusions between the anti-Nebraska members 
of the different parties, and elections to local offices 
of candidates who represented the various organi- 
zations which had united to form a common oppo- 
sition to the constant demands of slavery. In 
Michigan the new organization was complete. It 
held a regular convention, called itself the "Re- 
publican party," nominated its candidates, and 
elected them. 

Something had been said, even before the pas- 
sage of the bill, as to calling a convention of all 
the free States ; and Seward in reply to this sug- 
gestion had given his opinion that " we were not 
yet ready for a great national convention ; " that 
the States were the places for activity. " Let us 
make our power respected, as we can, through our 
elections in the States, and then bring the States 
into general council." 

The difficulties in the way of any fusion of the 
old parties were much greater in the East than in 
the West ; for at the East the animosities were 
much stronger between the various political ele- 
ments from which the opponents to the Nebraska 
bill were drawn. 

There were several distinct bodies. The North- 
ern Whigs, who on this question were a unit, were 
divided into at least two groups, — those who had 



FORMATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 135 

opposed the compromises of 1850, the Seward 
Whigs we may call them, — and those who had 
favored those compromises, the Webster Whigs. 
The former were the more numerous, and had been 
recruited by the addition of most of the young 
Whigs ; the strength of the latter was in the cities 
and with the older, richer, and more influential 
classes. Of the former Seward was the leader; 
but by the latter he was looked upon with distrust 
and dislike. If the houses of some of the con- 
servatives in New York were again opening to him, 
the Webster Whigs of Boston ignored his exist- 
ence even at a later period ; when he came to 
Massachusetts in December of the following year 
(1855) to deliver an oration at Plymouth, no one 
of them called upon him, though his arrival had 
been announced in the newspapers, and he passed 
a day in Boston, alone in a hotel parlor, reading 
Lewes's "Life of Goethe." For the Whigs of 
this class he had gone too fast and too far. To 
the Free Soilers who had been Democrats, and to 
those Democrats who had opposed the Nebraska 
bill, he was objectionable, as having been always, 
upon all the economic questions which had divided 
the two great parties, a pronounced Whig. For 
the successful formation of a new national party, 
it was essential that Seward should lend to the 
movement his active assistance, if he must not in- 
deed lead in it ; yet the politicians were too much 
afraid of the opposition to him from various 
quarters to put him at its head, and, as he thought, 



136 WILLIAIM HENRY SEWARD 

would have liked him to do the work and decline 
the honors. He wrote to his wife : ''I have letters 
of all sorts ; . . . the amount of which is that, in- 
somuch as I am too much of an anti-slavery man 
to be proscribed by anti-slavery men, and yet too 
much of a Whig to be allowed to lead, that I am 
in the way of great movements to make a Demo- 
cratic anti-slavery party . . . which would revo- 
lutionize the government at once. 

" Then again, I am so important to the Whig 
party that it cannot move without me ; but that 
party (the Webster part of it) is so jaundiced 
toward me, that I am expected to decline being 
a candidate right off, and go in for some other 
Whig candidate, and so carry the election for 
the Whig party. 

" The Free Soilers are engaged in schemes for 
nominatinjj Colonel Benton and dissolvinoj the 
Whig party ; . . . and there are not less than half 
a dozen parties coming to negotiate with me as if 
I were a vendor of votes." 

All that he saw and learned increased his doubts 
whether the various opponents of the Nebraska 
bill were yet prepared so to subordinate their 
differences as to work together harmoniously and 
earnestly for a common end, and confirmed his 
opinion that the time was not ripe for a national 
experiment, but for separate efforts in the States, 
where success would be more probable and more 
encouraging, and where failure would be less dis- 
astrous and demoralizing. This course seemed 



FORMATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 137 

all the more judicious, as there was no national 
contest this year, and separate congressional dis- 
tricts could arrange, each in its own way, for the 
election of anti-Nebraska congressmen, more effec- 
tually than if they were in any degree under the 
control of a new party organization. 

It presently appeared also that there was a new 
element to be taken into account in any political 
calculation : — the mysterious apparition of a new 
party, the " Dark Lantern," the " Know-Nothing" 
or " Native American " party, which was both a 
political organization and a secret order, whose 
ostensible purpose was to check the power and 
restrict the numbers of foreign-born citizens by 
a rigorous enforcement and the ultimate modifica- 
tion of the existing naturalization laws, to purify 
the ballot, and to resist all attempts to exclude the 
Bible from the public schools ; in other words, it 
seemed to be a union of American Protestants 
against Irish Roman Catholics. It originated in 
New York in 1853, and its avowed objects ap- 
pealed to many people in that and other large 
cities of the East, where the influx of illiterate 
foreigners was the greatest, and abuse of the 
naturalization laws most frequent. Conservative 
men all over the country who had been Whigs, 
and who realized that their party as a national 
organization was dead, joined the order in the 
hope that questions as to slavery might be put 
aside by these new issues, which had nothing sec- 
tional about them. It was the only refuge for a 



138 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

Southern Whig ; and Northern Whigs, who could 
not bring themselves to strike hands with Seward 
and the advance guard of their old party, found 
here an escape from so doing. It became dis- 
tinctly a Union-saving party in November, 1854, 
when it introduced into its ritual a third, or Union, 
degree, and conferred it on the initiates with an 
imposing ceremonial. Before this time, however, 
there were not wanting zealous anti-slavery men 
who had seen that the Know-Nothing organization 
might be used as an instrument in breaking up 
the old parties and aiding the formation of a new 
one, and who joined it for this purpose. They 
were sufficiently numerous in many States to influ- 
ence the nominations, and to take care that the 
candidates for Congress should be in harmony 
with their views. 

The Know - Nothings were badly defeated in 
Virginia in the spring of 1855, and their national 
council, in June of that year, was hopelessly di- 
vided by sectional strife ; yet in the elections of 
1854 they had been formidable opponents, all the 
more so because nothing was known of them, of 
their methods, their power, or their numbers. In 
Philadelphia, where they were supposed to be very 
numerous, Douglas denounced them bitterly in a 
campaign speech, hoping in this way to deter Dem- 
ocrats from joining the organization, and to secure 
for his party the full Irish vote. 

Seward, whose hostility to any political pro- 
scription on account of birth, race, or religion was 



FORMATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 139 

of long date and had often been stated by him in 
public addresses and letters, took no part in the 
campaign. His silence has been criticised. But 
whether considered with reference to his own per- 
sonal interest in his reelection to the Senate or to 
the success of the party, it seems to have been ju- 
dicious. It may be doubted whether, when the 
largest national issue to which he could address 
himself was practically that of his own reelection, 
he would have thought it becoming the dignity of 
his position to enter the lists as a campaign speaker 
on his own behalf. It was well understood, too, 
that many Whigs, who looked on him with jaun- 
diced eyes, had joined the new, mysterious com- 
pany with its secret affiliations. The Whig party 
of New York had declined all alliances whatso- 
ever, adhered to its old organization, and placed 
itself squarely on anti-Nebraska ground ; nothing 
that Seward could have said would have detached 
a single " Silver Grey " neophyte from his alle- 
giance to the new order, though it might have lost 
him the vote of some Know-Nothing, who had a 
more vivid interest in the struggle against a mani- 
fest and growing evil at home than in a crusade 
to secure the freedom of a region so remote as 
Kansas. In the State of New York the Whigs 
carried their ticket by a plurality of only three 
hundred in a vote of nearly half a million. A 
change of one hundred and fifty-five votes would 
have elected, the Democratic candidates. 

Early in February of the following year, Seward 



140 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

was reelected senator ; and this reelection, con- 
sidering his antecedents, was as severe a blow as 
could have been dealt the Know-Nothings at that 
time. The earnest members of that party had set 
their hearts on his defeat ; but the result showed 
that, when an issue was raised between anti-slavery 
and Americanism, there were members of that 
party, at least in the legislature of Seward's own 
State, who were opponents of slavery before they 
were Know-Nothings. 

This campaign and election, which seemed to 
Seward a victory for himself as well as his party, 
was to bear for him most bitter fruit. Horace 
Greeley, who was generally considered at that time 
an unselfish patriot, but had at bottom an unsatis- 
fied desire for a nomination, as a recognition from 
his party, had set his heart on being the Whig 
candidate for governor ; and had, as both he and 
his friends thought, every reason to expect this. 
In spite of Greeley's ability, his advocacy of vari- 
ous hobbies and crotchets of his own had led so 
many sensible peoj)le to doubt his judgment, that 
it was feared that his name on the ticket, when 
success was at the best so uncertain, would insure 
its defeat, and he did not receive the nomination ; 
while, to make matters worse, a rival editor — 
Henry J. Raymond, of the New York " Times " — 
was nominated and elected as lieutenant-governor. 
For all this Greeley chose to consider Seward re- 
sponsible, and he wrote him a letter, which Seward 
took for a momentary ebullition of temper, but 



FORMATION OF EEPUBLICAN PARTY 141 

which was in truth a declaration of undying hostil- 
ity. Greeley bided his time ; and in 1860 went 
from New York to Chicago as a " delegate from 
Oregon " to the Republican Convention, that he 
might do all in his power to get even with Seward 
and defeat his nomination for the presidency. 

The defeat of the Know-Nothings in Virginia, 
and their domestic disorders in Philadelphia, were 
unmistakable signs of waning strength. The au- 
spicious moment for the formation of a new party 
in those States which had clung to their old organi- 
zations appeared to have arrived. In Ohio, Penn- 
sylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, Republican 
conventions were called and candidates nominated. 
To this movement in New York Seward gave his 
hearty adhesion and a strong impulse. In a speech 
at Albany he summed up the case for the Northern 
opponents of the extension of slavery, by a most 
graphic sketch of the changes of attitude of the 
slaveholders, from their assent to the dedication to 
freedom of all our public lands by the ordinance of 
1787, to their steady encroachments and constantly 
increasing demands as to our newly acquired terri- 
tory from the time of the Louisiana purchase to 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise ; and he 
showed the necessity of a new party organization 
to resist the future exactions of this privileged and 
persistent class. 

The result of the autumn elections, however, in- 
dicated that the Northern seceders from the Know- 
Nothing party had underestimated its strength, 



142 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

and justified the boast of the New York leader of 
its pro-slavery faction : that, though they had ex- 
pelled thirty thousand members for supporting 
Seward's reelection, they could still muster votes 
enough to carry the State. The outcome of these 
elections, as a whole, was somewhat disheartening 
for the Republicans ; the Democracy recovered 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois ; 
and the pro-slavery American party, with the 
" Silver Grey " Whigs, who voted for its candi- 
dates, carried New York, California, and Massachu- 
setts. If any conclusion is to be drawn from the 
result in New York, it would seem to be that, 
had Seward surrendered his own judgment to the 
opinions of those who advocated the formation of a 
new national party the year before, and had he 
abandoned the Whig organization at that time, 
the Know-Nothings or the Democracy would have 
carried the State, he would have returned to pri- 
vate life, and the country would have lost his great 
services during the trying six years to come. 

The Republican party having been organized in 
the various Northern States, the next step was to 
give it a national character and prepare for the 
presidential campaign of the following year. A 
preliminary matter, to which much consideration 
was given by some of the leading men, was the 
question of the recognition of the Know-Nothings, 
either in the call for the convention, the platform, 
or the candidates, and an alliance, if not a fusion, 
of the two parties. 



FORMATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 143 

Just at the close of the year, at a conference to 
which Seward was invited, but which he declined 
to attend, it was proposed to have a convention, 
half Republican and half Know-Nothing, and he 
was told that all the free States except New York 
either had acquiesced in it or would do so. Seward 
declined to assume any responsibility as to the ac- 
tion of his State ; but for himself protested against 
any such combination, saying that if it were car- 
ried out, he should disavow all connection or sym- 
pathy with it. The prospect of some such under- 
standing he thought increasing as time went on, 
and regretted that the tone of anti-slavery senti- 
ment was becoming daily more and more modified 
under the pressure of Know-Nothing influence, 
feeling as if he himself were half demoralized by 
it. The question had a personal bearing with 
him from the outset. He would have liked the 
presidential nomination, if the new party were to 
put itself squarely on a ground of principle and 
not of expediency; but he could not accept it if 
there should be any taint of Know-Nothingism, 
either about the convention or the platform. At 
the conference which has been spoken of, it was 
stated that Fremont and Chase were both candi- 
dates ; and it was also said on Weed's authority 
that Seward was not so. This Seward confirmed, 
so far as it related to a nomination by the joint 
convention then proposed ; but he by no means 
abandoned either the hope or the desire for the 
nomination, though he put himself as to that in 



144 WILLIMI HENRY SEWARD 

Weed's hands, trusting to his political sagacity to 
decide what was best. The trend of opinion in 
favor of Fremont was so strong that early in April 
Seward wrote that it had ripened into the general 
impression that it would be expedient to nominate 
the California candidate ; but his apprehensions of 
some arrangement with the Know-Nothings were 
by no means relieved. " I am content and quiet 
on the personal question," he wrote to Weed, " and 
when the array of the battle shall be set and fixed, 
I shall decide upon my own line of duty, so as to 
save my independence without the exhibition of 
personal susceptibilities." 

A preliminary convention, on the 22d of Febru- 
ary, had announced the organization of the Kepub- 
licans as a national party ; its nominating conven- 
tion was to be held at Philadelphia on the 17th of 
June. As this time drew near Seward's uneasiness 
increased ; he thought the indications decisive of a 
compromise which would be embarrassing to him, 
and " even more injurious to the great cause in 
whose name it was to be made." He had not, 
however, nor had the people generally, abandoned 
all expectation of his being the nominee of the 
convention ; and though he learned — and with 
apparent surprise, tracing no connection between 
Greeley's conduct and his letter — that Greeley 
had struck hands with his enemies, and sacrificed 
him for the good of the cause, and that Weed 
had concurred in this ; yet it was not till the day 
the convention met that he absolutely declined the 




H^L.^^^'^Cr^ uA^-^-r^L- 



FORMATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 145 

nomination, upon the ground that the convention 
was not prepared to adopt all his principles, and 
that he would not modify them to secure the presi- 
dency. Chase's name was also withdrawn, and the 
only candidates practically before the convention 
were Fremont and McLean. The latter was the 
choice of Pennsylvania, the only man, it was said, 
who could carry that State, where the Republi- 
can party contained a large admixture of Know- 
Nothings, to whom Seward was impossible and 
Fremont unacceptable. But on the first ballot 
Fremont received a decisive majority, and his nom- 
ination was at once made unanimous. The plat- 
form, contrary to Seward's expectation, contained 
nothing to which he could * not cordially assent. 
The result of the convention was, as he himself ex- 
pressed it, "a complete Seward platform with new 
representative men upon it." 

It is certainly very doubtful whether, if Seward 
himself had personally urged his claims for the 
nomination at this time, and his friends had done 
all in their power to procure it for him, he could 
have carried the convention. He was not then so 
strong in the country as he was four years later ; 
in the Republican party, especially in Pennsylvania 
and Indiana, there were many seceders from the 
Know-Nothings to whom he was particularly objec- 
tionable ; the opposition of the delegates from these 
States in the convention four years later had a 
powerful, if not a conclusive, effect against him at 
that time, and their influence would have been 



146 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

greater in 1856 tlian it was in 1860. Moreover, 
his anti-slavery views were more advanced than 
those of a large number of Republicans, who were 
opposed to the extension of slavery, but by no 
means believers in emancipation in the District of 
Columbia, or in taking any steps towards ultimate 
emancipation in the slave States, even with their 
consent and with compensation. He was really, in 
1856, the candidate of the original anti-slavery 
men, the pioneers of the army of freedom. 

Two years earlier Seward had objected to a 
national convention, on the ground " that it would 
bring together only the old veterans." Now the 
ranks of the anti-Nebraska party were filled with 
new recruits, young men ; they were the bone and 
sinew of the party in the country, and the delegates 
at Philadelphia represented them. Fremont was 
their choice. All that was kno^vn of him, his 
pluck, energy, persistent endurance, and skill as 
an explorer, justified their attributing to him the 
qualities which the times and the triumph of the 
Republicans would require. His career appealed 
to them ; his adventures roused their interest and 
excited their admiration ; there was a romance 
about his marriage which touched their sympathies, 
and there had been an element of martyrdom in 
his treatment by the government which enlisted in 
his behalf the lovers of justice. He was personally 
handsome and attractive ; a Southerner by birth, 
and a son-in-law of Benton, who, as an opponent — 
though on grounds peculiar to himself — of the 



FORMATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 147 

repeal of the Missouri Compromise, had more or 
less close relations with the Republican leaders. 
Everything told in his favor. To those delegates 
who were looking only to the promotion of the 
principles of their party, as well as to those who 
were eager for success, and to the mass of the 
people, Fremont appeared an ideal candidate. He 
was invested by them with the qualities of a hero ; 
and of all the names presented to the convention, 
or suggested elsewhere, his was doubtless the most 
potent to conjure with. 

The nomination of Buchanan was the strongest 
that the Democrats could have made, and was dis- 
couraging to the Republicans. " The temper of 
the politicians " (i. e., the Republican), wrote Sew- 
ard, " is subdued by Buchanan's nomination, and 
indicates retreat, confusion, rout in the election." 
Early in August he found that " there was no 
Republican organization or life in eastern Pennsyl- 
vania or New Jersey," and that " the well-informed 
despaired of both these States, and so of the election 
itself." There was a pressure on him to take the 
field ; nevertheless he did not make any campaign 
speech till October. Congress was late in adjourn- 
ing. The two houses disagreed as to the army 
appropriations, — the Representatives passed the 
bill with a proviso, prohibiting the employment of 
troops to enforce the laws of the fraudulent legisla- 
ture of Kansas ; the Senate refused to concur ; and 
so the session ended. The President immediately 
called an extra session, and, after laboring ten 



148 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

days with tlie recalcitrant Democrats, succeeded in 
forcing through the House, by the narrow major- 
ity of three, the bill without the proviso. Seward 
took a month's needed rest, then spoke at Detroit, 
and devoted the time till the election to the 
work of the campaign at various and widely sepa- 
rated places in his own State. Of these speeches 
only two have been preserved in any permanent 
form. 

In that at Detroit he drew a vivid picture, hardly 
exaggerated, of the slaveholders' entire possession 
of the government in all its branches, — the ex- 
ecutive, from the President and the heads of the 
various departments to the humblest tide-waiter in 
the Customs, the most unimportant consul in our 
foreign service, and the merest scrivener in the 
army of clerks ; the legislative, through their con- 
trol of the Senate, with the aid of their Northern 
Democratic allies ; and the judicial, by having a 
majority of the justices of the Supreme Court 
from the slaveholding States. He also showed 
how fidelity to the slaveholders' policy was the test 
required of all Northern Democrats who wished to 
share even the crumbs that fell from the govern- 
ment's table. 

His speech at Auburn repeated his opinion that 
the conflict was not merely for " toleration, but 
for absolute political sway in the Republic, between 
the system of free labor with equal and univer- 
sal suffrage, free speech, free thought, and free 
action, and the system of slave labor with unequal 



FORMATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 149 

franchises, secured by arbitrary, oppressive, and 
tyrannical laws ; " and emphasized again his con- 
viction that " the State, the nation, and the earth 
were to be, in the fullness of time, the abode of 
freemen, and its hills and valleys to be fields of 
free labor, free thought, and free suffrage." 

New York responded handsomely to Seward's 
arguments and appeals ; though Fremont carried 
the State only by a plurality, he had eighty thou- 
sand votes more than Buchanan, and his majority 
over Fillmore was greater than Fillmore's entire 
vote. Of the sixteen free States, eleven voted for 
Fremont. He received only twelve hundred votes 
in the slave States, and these came from Delaware, 
Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky. Buchanan 
was elected by the solid South, with the aid of 
five free States (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indi- 
ana, Illinois, and California). In the free States 
Buchanan had a hundred and twenty thousand less 
votes than Fremont, and by the popular vote of 
the country was in a minority of nearly three 
hundred thousand. There were votes for Fillmore 
in all the States where the people chose the elect- 
ors ; 1 but they were so distributed that, though he 
was the choice of nearly nine hundred thousand 
voters, he received only the eight electoral votes 
of the State of Maryland. 

The elections of the year had an ominous aspect. 
In the House of Representatives the speaker was 
chosen for the first time by a purely sectional 

1 In South Caxoliua they were chosen by the Legislature. 



150 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

majority, no Southern man voting for the success- 
ful candidate, and no Northerner for his opponent. 
The issue in the presidential campaign had been 
solely sectional, — the surrender of the Territories 
to slavery or its exclusion from them. Buchanan, 
though a Pennsylvanian, was the nominee of the 
South, and the representative of the slaveholders' 
policy. The new party had carried nearly tliree 
fourths of the free States, had given to Douglas, 
as a colleague, an anti-Nebraska senator, and sub- 
stituted for General Cass a radical Republican 
from Michigan. If the South had won the victory, 
it was one that boded ill for their future control of 
the country. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
the political struggle during the remainder of 
Pierce's term and for a large part of Buchanan's 
was as to slavery or freedom in Kansas. On the 
one side were arrayed the administration with its 
patronage and appointments, the solid South, with 
its members of Congress, its Democratic supporters 
in the North and the border ruffians from Missouri ; 
on the other were the free-state settlers in Kansas, 
who were largely in the majority there, and the 
Republican party in Congress and in the country. 
The battle was fought in the Territory between the 
settlers and immigrants from the North, and the 
invaders from Missouri and the South ; in Wash- 
ington, by the President and his advisers at the 
White House, by senators and representatives at 
the Capitol. But as the members of the lower 
house are more numerous and more frequently 
elected, the change in the public opinion of the 
North caused by the passage of the bill was more 
quickly shown there, the opposition to the admin- 
istration was stronger in the House, and the part 
played by the representatives during the struggle 



152 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

was in some respects more prominent and impor- 
tant than that of the Senate, with which Seward 
was directly concerned. The story of the struggle 
cannot, however, be omitted here, nor can any one 
part of it be told without the other. 

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had 
thoroughly roused all the Northern people except 
the Hunker Democrats. Angry at the South's 
breach of faith in accepting the benefits of a bar- 
gain and then repudiating its obligations, the 
North determined to save for freedom, if possible, 
the territory secured by the Compromise. The 
South recognized the struggle as a vital one. " If 
Kansas is abolitionized," wrote Atchison, " Mis- 
souri ceases to be a slave State, New Mexico be- 
comes a free State, California remains a free State. 
But if we secure Kansas as a slave State, Missouri 
is secure. New Mexico, and southern California, if 
not all of it, becomes a slave State ; in a word, the 
prosperity or ruin of the whole South depends on 
the Kansas struggle." 

One or more emigrant aid societies had been 
organized at the North before the passage of the 
bill, and others followed afterwards. Among the 
earliest was the New England Emigrant Aid 
Society, a Massachusetts company, which assisted 
five hundred free-state men to emigrate and settle 
in Kansas within a year, and about three thousand 
during the entire struggle. The administration 
was prompt in opening the Territory to settlement, 
and had purchased, while the bill was still pend- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 153 

ing, several reservations lying nearest Missouri, 
from the Indian tribes to whom they had been 
secured by treaty. These purchases were known 
to the people of Missouri before the rest of the 
country had learned of them ; and, within a few 
days after the bill became a law, hundreds of Mis- 
sourians entered the Territory in small bodies at 
various points, staked out, each man for himself, 
his quarter section or more, and marked it. The 
different companies then held meetings, at which 
they resolved that slavery already existed in the 
Territory, and urged slaveholders to bring in their 
property at once ; while they also voted to afford 
no protection to abolitionist settlers. To offset the 
emigrant aid societies of the North, associations 
called " Blue Lodges," " Sous of the South," and 
other similar names, were organized in western 
Missouri, to take possession of Kansas in behalf of 
slavery, and to assist in removing any emigrant 
who might go there under the auspices of the 
Northern societies. 

The first territorial governor appointed by Pre- 
sident Pierce was Andrew H. Eeeder of Pennsyl- 
vania, whose loyalty as an administration Democrat 
was unquestioned. An election for a delegate to 
Congress was had by his orders at the end of 
November, 1854, and of the twenty-eight hundred 
ballots then cast, more than seventeen hundred 
were the illegal votes of invading Missourians. In 
one polling precinct six hundred and four votes 
were thrown, of which only twenty were legal. 



154 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

There was no concealment about the matter ; what 
was done was done openly, and was encouraged 
and approved. " When you reside within one 
day's journey of the Territory," said Senator Atchi- 
son in a public speech before this election, "and 
when your peace, your quiet, and your property 
depend upon your action, you can, without any 
exertion, send five hundred of your young men who 
will vote in favor of your institutions. Should 
each county in Missouri only do its duty, the ques- 
tion will be decided quietly and peaceably at the 
ballot box." 

After ascertaining by a census the number of 
legal voters in the Territory, Governor Reeder 
appointed a day for the election of a territorial 
legislature. The evening before, about a thou- 
sand Missourians, armed with rifles, pistols, and 
bowie-knives, and supported by two pieces of 
artillery, arrived at Lawrence, a free-state town. 
They distributed their men among the different 
election precincts, overawed the judges of election, 
and, reinforced by other men of Missouri, chose 
their candidates in all but two of the districts. 
The census had shown twenty-nine hundred voters ; 
but more than six thousand ballots were cast, only 
eight hundred of which were legal. In some of 
the districts, where protests were seasonably made, 
the governor declined to issue certificates of elec- 
tion, and ordered a new poll ; but the legislature 
refused to admit the free-state men chosen on this 
second ballot, and gave the seats to the persons to 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 155 

whom the governor had refused certificates. The 
legislature thus chosen adopted by a single act all 
the Missouri statutes (to save time), and then pro- 
ceeded to pass, notwithstanding the governor's 
veto, a criminal code, by which nearly all offenses 
connected with slavery, including that of aiding 
a fugitive to escape, were made punishable with 
death. 

Reeder's course as to the election and his vetoes 
made it clear that he was not a sufficiently pliant 
tool ; the President, yielding to the pressure from 
the South, removed him, and appointed in his 
place Wilson Shannon of Ohio, who signalized 
his arrival in the Territory by declaring in a pub- 
lic speech that he was "for slavery in Kansas." 
Isolated acts of violence had taken place from 
time to time, before and during Reeder's adminis- 
tration ; a free-state settler had been occasionally 
murdered ; the pro-slavery newspapers had given 
warning that they " would continue to lynch and 
hang, tar, feather, and drown every white-livered 
abolitionist who dared pollute the soil;" and Law- 
rence had been threatened by a party of more 
than two hundred Missourians. Under Shannon's 
misgovernment such outrages became the rule; 
Lawrence was plundered ; its printing-offices and 
hotels were burned by a troop of about eight hun- 
dred men, partly from the South and partly from 
Missouri, armed with weapons from the United 
States arsenal, and commanded by General Atchi- 
son, United States senator from Missouri ; whilst 



156 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

later the town of Osawatomie was sacked and 
burned by a similar force headed by Whitfield, 
the territorial delegate to Congress. 

Meantime, the free-state settlers, seeking relief 
by a thoroughly American process, had called a 
convention, which framed a constitution prohibit- 
ing slavery. This was ratified by the actual set- 
tlers, a governor and legislature were chosen, and 
a memorial was forwarded to Congress praying for 
the admission of Kansas as a free State under this 
constitution. The President's annual message, 
sent in on the last day of the year (1855) dis- 
missed the subject of Kansas with a word ; but 
less than a month later, when he had determined 
to give a thorough-going support to the Southern- 
ers, although nothing new had happened in the 
interval, he sent a special message in which he 
characterized the proceedings of the fi-ee- state 
settlers as revolutionary and treasonable,^ and 
announced his purpose of upholding the fraudu- 
lent legislature and enforcing its laws by federal 
authority ; and, in accordance with the policy 
thus declared, the legislature at Topeka was dis- 
persed by United States regulars in the following 
July. 

1 It was nothing revolutionary or even unprecedented for the 
people of a Territory, without any previous authority from Con- 
gress, to form a state constitution and ask for admission to the 
Union. Michigan did this and was admitted ; California had done 
it and been admitted ; and the reasons for the action of the peo- 
ple of Kansas, though of a different nature, were quite as strong 
as those which existed in either California or Michigan. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 157 

A guerrilla war was carried on during the sum- 
mer of the year 1856 between bands of free-state 
and pro-slavery men. In August the administra- 
tion, unable longer to endure the scandals of Shan- 
non's misgovernment, and fearing lest these should 
lose them the presidential election, removed him, 
and appointed John W. Geary of Pennsylvania in 
his place. Geary endeavored to restore order and 
to do exact justice, leaning neither to one side nor 
the other; but, finding that this impartiality was 
not what the administration required, he resio-ned 
in the following March. 

Whatever may have been President Pierce's 
ideas when he assented to Douglas's bill and ac- 
cepted the doctrine of popular sovereignty, in his 
actual treatment of Kansas he had been not the 
honest exponent of that policy, but the active and 
unhesitating agent of those Southerners who were 
determined, by fair means or foul, to make that 
Territory a slave State. He finds his severest con- 
demnation in the course of the governors appointed 
by him. The two who were men of character, and 
who were not willing to use their power to defeat , 
the wishes of the actual settlers and to drive the 
free state men from the Territory, were forced out 
of office, and became most active opponents of his 
policy, unsparing in their exposure and denuncia- 
tion of the frauds and violence which he was seek- 
ing to hide ; while the third, who had been at first 
the ready tool of the border ruffians of Missouri, 
and acceptable to the whole South, was at last 



158 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

unable to satisfy their demands, was distrusted by 
them, desp sed by the other party, and removed in 
disgrace by the administration that had appointed 
him. 

In the Congress which met in December, 1855, 
the House had a majority hostile to the adminis- 
tration, but composed of heterogeneous elements. 
There were Democrats and pro-slavery Whigs, 
both pro-slavery and anti-slavery Americans, and 
Republicans. No one party had the control, and it 
was not until the 3d of February, 1856, that its 
organization was perfected by the choice of a 
speaker. Meantime, both houses had taken action 
on the Kansas question, the Senate by resolutions 
of inquiry, calling on the President for information 
as to the troubles there ; and the House by the 
passage of a resolve demanding the restoration of 
the Missouri Compromise. In the Senate, the 
President's special message concerning Kansas, 
and his answer to the resolutions of inquiry, were 
referred to the Committee on Territories, of which 
Douglas was chairman. The committee presented 
two reports ; that of the majority, prepared by 
Douglas, was very severe upon the settlers from 
the free States and upon the Emigrant Aid Society, 
who were made responsible for all that was wrong 
in Kansas; while the fraudulent legislature, he 
insisted, was a proper law-making body, whose 
acts were legal statutes binding upon the people. 
The minority report was signed only by Senator 
Collamer of Vermont, who justified the Topeka 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 159 

convention and the proceedings under it as a peace- 
ful and constitutional effort for the redress of griev- 
ances. The Emigrant Aid Society was vindicated 
from Douglas's attack, as soon as the reading of 
the reports was finished, by Sumner's spirited pro- 
test that it had not offended, either in letter or 
spirit, the Constitution and laws of the land. It 
had sent men to Kansas, " and it had a right to do 
so. Its agents loved freedom and hated slavery, 
and they had a right to do so." " This, and no 
more, was its offense." 

In the House Governor Reeder, who had been 
elected by the legal voters of Kansas as territorial 
delegate, presented a petition claiming the seat 
held by Whitfield, the delegate fraudulently chosen 
by the Missourians ; and this petition, after some 
debate, was referred to a committee empowered to 
investigate generally the Kansas troubles. The 
exhaustive report of this committee, with the ac- 
companying evidence, is a storehouse of informa- 
tion as to the history of the times. On the same 
day that this committee was appointed in the 
House, Douglas addressed the Senate in support 
of his report and of the bill in which its conclusions 
were embodied, which authorized the people of 
Kansas to form a state constitution, when they 
should have sufficient population to entitle them to 
one representative in Congress. For this bill 
Seward proposed, as a substitute, the immediate 
admission of Kansas under the Topeka constitu- 
tion. Of his speech in support of this substitute, 



160 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

one hundred and sixty-two thousand copies were 
sent out on the day it was published. 

Such defense as could be made for the invaders 
of Kansas, for the rule they had established there, 
and for the government's support of it, had already 
been set forth in the President's message and in 
Douglas's report ; and a large part of Seward's 
speech was devoted to a scathing criticism of the 
President's message, and an unsparing exposure of 
his misrepresentations and concealment of facts, 
of his unjust aspersions on the North, and of the 
flimsy pretexts and hardly specious arguments by 
which he attempted to justify his course. It might 
almost be called, in this aspect, an arraignment, 
trial, and conviction of the President, upon the 
charge of prostituting his official power to sustain 
in Kansas a government which he knew, from his 
own representatives, had been forced upon the 
Territory by the frauds and violence of the people 
of Missouri. Seward proved to a demonstration, 
by the declarations of the leaders of the border 
ruffians, by the statements of independent observ- 
ers, as well as by those of the free settlers of 
Kansas, and by the public avowals of the terri- 
torial governor, whom the President himself had 
appointed, that " Kansas had been invaded, con- 
quered, subjugated by an armed force from beyond 
her borders, trampling under foot the principles of 
the Kansas bill and the rights of suffrage ; " and 
that the President of the United States was aiding 
and abetting this wrong, upholding with all the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 161 

resources of the administration and all the powers 
of the federal authority the perpetrators of this 
outrage upon republican government, and main- 
taining by force of arms the tyranny they had 
established. Seward then turned to the question 
of how these wrongs were to be redressed. His 
contention was unanswerable, that the only sure 
remedy was the immediate admission of Kansas 
as a State, under the constitution presented by the 
actual settlers. The objections urged to this course 
were practically only formal, and might be waived 
by Congress in this case, as they had been in 
others. Touching the very heart of the contro- 
versy, he said : " Congress can refuse admission to 
Kansas only on the ground that it will not relin- 
quish the hope of carrying African slavery into 
that Territory;" . . . and asked: "Have we come 
to that stage of demoralization and degeneracy so 
soon ? " 

The speech was the masterly argument of a 
statesman. If he sometimes showed a fondness 
for philosophical generalization and theorizing, 
there was nothing of that here ; it was an emi- 
nently practical speech. Any remedy, other than 
that which he urged, was at the best doubtful. 
Any plan authorizing the calling of a new conven- 
tion, and the formation of a new constitution, 
because of defects or uncertainties about the one 
adopted at Topeka, must be carried out by the 
authorities actually in power in Kansas, the crea- 
tures and tools of the border ruffians who elected 



162 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

them, and under the supervision of an admin- 
istration whose partisan character and absohite 
disregard of justice and of the pledges of the or- 
ganic law of the Territory had already been 
abundantly manifested. But the truth was, as 
Seward suggested, that neither the administration 
nor the South was prepared to relinquish one inch 
of the advantage which slavery had already gained 
in the Territory, whether acquired by force or 
fraud ; both were still confidently expecting to 
make it a slave State ; and the majority of the 
Senate were supporters of the South and of the 
administration. 

The debate on Kansas continued till the close 
of the session in August ; it resulted in no legisla- 
tion ; but the speeches of the opposition, circulated 
by hundreds of thousands all over the North, had 
an immense effect in forming and stimulating 
public opinion, and produced a reaction even in 
Congress. This was increased by the assault upon 
Sumner in the senate chamber itself, by the burn- 
ing of Lawrence, and by the publication of the 
report of the committee of the House, charged to 
investigate the Kansas troubles. 

For two whole days Sumner addressed the Sen- 
ate in denunciation of the crime against Kansas. 
His speech was not merely an unsparing philippic 
against slavery, but most bitter in its personalities. 
He spoke of Atchison, stalking like Catiline into 
the Senate, reeking with conspiracy, and then like 
Catiline skulking away to join and provoke the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 163 

conspirators, " murderous robbers from Missouri, 
hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit 
of an uneasy civilization ; " of Butler of South 
Carolina, " with incoherent phrases, discharging 
the loose expectoration of his speech ; " and of 
Douglas, as " switching out from his tongue the 
perpetual stench of offensive personality." It was 
a speech in this aspect to make the judicious grieve, 
and feel a keen regret that Sumner should have 
descended to such a level. It would hardly have 
gained converts to the Republican party save for 
the assault by which it was followed. 

Two days later, while he was writing at his desk 
in the senate chamber, just after the adjournment, 
he was attacked in a most brutal and cowardly 
manner by Preston S. Brooks, a member of the 
House from South Carolina, who inflicted on him 
injuries from which he never wholly recovered. 
The Senate, when Seward moved for a committee 
to investigate this assault, so far forgot the com- 
mon parliamentary courtesies, the requirements of 
decency, and the gravity of the occasion, as to 
choose a committee composed wholly of Sumner's 
personal and political enemies, who performed the 
service expected of them, and reported that there 
was nothing for the Senate to do. The subservi- 
ent judiciary of Washington disgraced itself by 
inflicting on Brooks a paltry fine, and even in the 
House of Representatives there were not to be 
found the necessary two thirds to secure his expul- 
sion. Any difference of opinion there may have 



164 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

been at the North as to the wisdom or good taste 
of Sumner's speech disappeared at once, forgotten 
in the universal outburst of sympathy for him 
and indignation at the assault ; the recollection of 
which, even to-day, heightens Sumner's fame, by 
investing him with somewhat of the glory of mar- 
tyrdom. 

" The blows that fell on the head of the senator 
from Massachusetts," said Seward, " have done 
more for the cause of human freedom in Kansas 
and in the Territories of the United States, than 
all the eloquence which has resounded in these 
halls, from the days when Rufus King asserted 
that cause in this chamber until the present hour." 
It was not regarded merely as an attack upon an 
individual, it was an assault on the freedom of 
debate, a violation of the privileges and dignity 
of the Senate, an insult to the State that Sumner 
represented, and through that to all the other 
States of the Union. 

The same day that Simmer was speaking in the 
Senate, the free settlers' town of Lawrence in Kan- 
sas was attacked and burned. A little later came 
the report of the House committee, accompanied 
by evidence which proved, beyond question, that 
the territorial elections were carried by fraud, the 
Legislature unlawfully constituted, and its acts 
without a color of legality. Under these circum- 
stances it was felt by some Southern senators that 
there must be further concessions to the public 
opinion of the North, some fresh attempt at a set- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 165 

tlement of tlie Kansas question. Various amend- 
ments to Douglas's original bill were proposed, 
and other measures introduced ; these were all 
referred to the Committee on Territories, who re- 
ported a bill which was, in substance, one that had 
been offered a few days before by Senator Toombs 
of Georgia. Upon its face it was a fair proposi- 
tion. There was to be a new census in Kansas, 
only actual male inhabitants of full age were to 
be registered as voters, and they were to elect 
delegates to a constitutional convention. Com- 
missioners were to supervise the census and the 
registration ; and frauds and irregularities at the 
election were to be prevented. Had the measure 
been proposed in January instead of July, its de- 
tails might have been modified, where they were 
open to criticism, and the bill have become a law ; 
but it was brought in too late. The presidential 
election was approaching, and Seward thought, 
and doubtless others with him, that the change 
from denunciation to compromise proceeded only 
from the alarm of the Democrats. 

The Republicans objected to the bill as a snare 
and a delusion. It did not directly annul the en- 
actments of the usurping legislature. On the 
contrary it recognized that body as a regularly 
chosen law-making assemblage, and left it uncer- 
tain whether any of its so-called laws were abro- 
gated, remitting the determination of this question 
to the territorial judges, whose partisan character 
had been already abundantly demonstrated. The 



166 WILLIAM HENRY SEWAED 

proposed bill continued the existing regime in 
Kansas, until a new, census should be had, dele- 
gates elected, a convention held, a constitution 
formed, and Kansas admitted as a State, thus 
perpetuating the tyranny established by fraud 
and violence, and only maintained in power by 
the arms of the United States. It provided that a 
census should be taken and an election held under 
the direction of commissioners, to be appointed by 
a president who had already shown by the appoint- 
ments he had made, by the officers he had retained, 
and by those he had removed, how unevenly he 
held the scales of justice in the Territory, how little 
freedom of action he was allowed by his masters, 
and how he lacked courage to assert himself against 
the hot-headed Southerners who prescribed his 
policy and his conduct. All this and more, which 
made it " a sham, evasive Kansas bill," Seward 
showed in his speech on an amendment, offered 
by Wilson, proposing the immediate repeal of all 
the spurious laws of the so-called Legislature, — 
an amendment which the Southern and Democratic 
majority of the Senate at once rejected. 

The proofs of the wrongs done in Kansas were 
quite different now from what they had been when 
Seward sjioke in March. There was no more need 
of argument or inference, and no room for denial 
or doubt. The evidence taken by the House com- 
mittee established conclusively not only the jDublic 
wrong committed by the invaders from Missouri 
and ratified and sustained by the President of the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 167 

United States and his territorial officers, but also 
the private violence and crime by which settlers 
from the free States had been robbed of their pro- 
perty, their houses burned, their cattle destroyed, 
and they themselves either murdered or compelled 
to flee for their lives; and it was not to be ex- 
pected that the Eepublicans would accept as satis- 
factory a bill which converted the illegal oppressors 
of the Territory into its rightful governors, and 
substituted for the election guaranteed by its or- 
ganic law a ballot to be taken after the settlers 
from the free States had been driven from Kansas, 
and under conditions which would permit the peo- 
ple from Missouri to come into the Territory, ac- 
cording to their avowed plan, " in time to acquire 
the right to become legal voters for the purpose of 
determining the domestic institutions of the new 
State." 

The bill passed the Senate, but not the House. 
The House bill, admitting Kansas as a State, un- 
der the Topeka constitution, was rejected in the 
Senate, and Congress adjourned without giving 
any relief to the people. 



CHAPTER X 

THE DRED SCOTT CASE — THE FINAL STRUGGLE 
FOR KANSAS 

The closing session of the Congress which ex- 
pired with Pierce's administration was, like most 
of the short sessions ending with a presidential 
term, absolutely colorless and unimportant; and 
Buchanan was inaugurated with the hopes of many 
Northern Whigs and Democrats, who had voted 
for him with hesitation, that he would have a just 
and tranquil administration, a reign of law and 
order in Kansas, and no further slavery agitation. 
But two days had not elapsed before the country 
was shaken to its centre by the extraordinary in- 
tervention of the Supreme Court in the slavery 
discussion. The statement in Buchanan's inaugu- 
ral, that "the point of time when the people of a 
Territory can decide the question of slavery for 
themselves" would be "speedily and finally settled 
by that court," had not at all prepared the public 
for what was to follow. It was known that a case 
was pending before the Supreme Court, in which 
one Dred Scott, a person of African descent, and 
once a slave, was claiming his freedom, on the 
ground of a residence with his master in Minnesota, 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 169 

a Territory made free by the Missouri Compro- 
mise, and of a shorter stay in Illinois, where 
slavery had been prohibited by the ordinance of 
1787. To maintain his action it was necessary 
that the plaintiff should be a citizen of the United 
States ; if he were not so, the federal courts would 
have no jurisdiction of the case. The first objec- 
tion raised by the master was to Scott's citizen- 
ship, upon the ground that this was a white man's 
government, and that no person of African blood 
could be a citizen. This objection was not sus- 
tained by the court in which the suit was originally 
brought, and the trial went on; but the court 
finally decided that Dred Scott was not entitled to 
his freedom. The case was then taken up to the 
Supreme Court and had been twice argued there. 
A few days after the inauguration that court an- 
nounced its decision. The majority of the judges 
held that Dred Scott was not a citizen, because 
he was of African blood, and that the courts of 
the United States had, therefore, no jurisdiction 
of his suit. This was the end of the matter, so 
far as Dred Scott was concerned. From this judg- 
ment there was no appeal. Two judges, however, 
dissented from the judgment. In their opinion 
Dred Scott, though of African descent, was a 
citizen of the United States, and the court had 
jurisdiction of his suit. Having reached this con- 
clusion, it became necessary for them to examine 
all the facts of the case, to consider the constitu- 
tionality of the Missouri Compromise and of the 



170 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

ordinance of 1787, and the effect of the plain- 
tiff's living in Minnesota and Illinois; this they 
did in a most exhaustive manner, and, affirming 
the constitutionality of both these enactments, de- 
cided in favor of the plaintiff's claim to his free- 
dom. 

The Southern and pro-slavery members of the 
court were unwilling to let the statements and rea- 
soning of these dissenting opinions go out to the 
country without some reply on their part, and in- 
duced the chief justice to violate the recognized 
and established judicial proprieties, by adding to 
his opinion a statement of his political views upon 
the relations between the Constitution and slavery, 
as if this were a part of the judgment of the court. 
It was a flagrant abuse of a judicial position, and 
drew from one of the dissenting justices, in no 
way a sympathizer with the Republican party or 
the anti-slavery agitators, this emphatic rebuke: 
"I dissent from the assumption of authority by 
the majority of the court to examine the constitu- 
tionality of the act called the Missouri Compro- 
mise. Having decided that this is a case to which 
the judicial power of the United States does not 
extend, they have gone on to examine the merits, 
and so have reached the question of the power of 
Congress to pass this act. On so grave a subject 
as this, I feel obliged to say that, in my opinion, 
such an extension of judicial power transcends the 
limits of the authority of the court." 

The political declaration of the chief justice was 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 171 

in substance a repetition of Calhoun's doctrine, 
that the Territories were the common domain of 
the several States, in which each had equal rights ; 
that therefore the people of every State could 
legally carry into any Territory, and lawfully hold 
there, any property recognized as lawful in any 
State; and that all legislation, congressional or 
territorial, limiting or interfering with the full 
and perfect enjoyment of this right, was unconsti- 
tutional and void. If this statement had been 
necessary to the judgment of the court in the case, 
it would have been a hard blow to the Kepublican 
party, whose avowed object was the exclusion of 
slavery from the Territories; but it was so obvi- 
ously a pure piece of politics that, stigmatized as 
it had been by Mr. Justice Curtis, it only im- 
pressed the people of the North as a fresh and 
most convincing proof of the demoralizing influ- 
ence of the slave power, roused them to more 
strenuous efforts to make Kansas free, and enven- 
omed still more the bitterness already existing 
between the two sections of the country. 

Judge Curtis had shown the Republicans that 
the chief justice's politics were no part of the judg- 
ment of the court ; that they were only the politi- 
cal views of a judge upon questions not at the time 
judicially before him, and of no binding force 
whatever. Lincoln and Seward made another sug- 
gestion. The judgment settled the case of Dred 
Scott ; but it might be reversed in some other suit, 
as other judgments had been, and one mission of 



172 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

the Republican party should be to hasten this 
result. 

It was evident from the President's inaugrural 
that he had been privately informed of what the 
court was to do, and it was believed and asserted 
by Republican leaders that the decision had been 
withheld until after the election, lest it should in- 
jure or destroy the chances of Democratic success; 
and that nothing would have been heard of the 
monstrous doctrines of the chief justice had Fre- 
mont been chosen president. Lincoln, in a public 
speech in Illinois, attacked the court for its attempt 
to render nugatory the right of choosing between 
freedom and slavery, which the Kansas-Nebraska 
act assumed the people of the Territory to possess. 
Seward charged the court with forgetting, "in this 
ill-omened act, its own dignity, which had always 
before been maintained with just judicial jeal- 
ousy," and both the court and the President with 
failing to remember "that judicial usurpation was 
more odious and intolerable than any other among 
the manifold practices of tyranny." 

The resignation of Governor Geary, President 
Pierce's last appointee in Kansas, took effect at 
the close of the presidential term, leaving Buch- 
anan free to make his own appointment. After 
much persuasion, he induced Robert J. Walker, 
of Mississippi, to accept the post. Walker was a 
Pennsylvanian by birth, who had removed to Mis- 
sissippi soon after he began practicing the law. 
He had been in Congress, was Polk's secretary 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 173 

of the treasury, had exercised a large influence 
with several Democratic administrations and with 
the Democratic party, had advocated the annexa- 
tion of Texas and counseled a vigorous prosecution 
of the Mexican war, and was a man of much more 
prominence, of larger experience in public affairs, 
and of greater ability than is usually to be found 
in the office of governor of a Territory. In his 
inaugural address, Buchanan had given the assur- 
ance that any constitution, framed by a convention 
in Kansas, should be submitted to the people ; and 
before Walker left for the West, he understood 
that the President agreed with him that the terri- 
torial act required this to be done. The fraudu- 
lent legislature had called a convention, and ap- 
pointed a time for the choice of delegates. Walker 
arrived in the Territory before the day fixed for the 
election, and endeavored to induce the free state 
men to vote. They were afraid to trust him, and 
suffered the election to go by default ; a little more 
than one fifth of the registered voters chose the 
delegates. 1 The convention met at Lecompton, 
but immediately adjourned until after the regular 
election of a new territorial legislature. Mean- 
time, the governor, having satisfied himself that 
Kansas was lost to slavery, though he still hoped 

^ Had there been no frauds and had the free-state men voted, 
as the governor urged them to do, they would have elected their 
own candidates as delegates, notwithstanding that about seven- 
teen counties, settled principally from the North, had been prac- 
tically disfranchised by omitting them from the census. 



174 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

she might be honestly saved to the Democracy, if 
the two wings of the Democratic party, the free- 
state and pro-slavery Democrats, would unite, bent 
his energies to accomplishing this, and to inducing 
the free-state men to vote at the regular territorial 
election. With some difficulty they were per- 
suaded to do so. The election was, on the whole, 
a fair one. In one precinct, where there were 
about a hvmdred voters, the returns showed sixteen 
hundred votes for the pro-slavery candidate; in 
another more than twelve hundred similar votes 
represented about twenty settlers entitled to the 
ballot. Walker courageously threw out these re- 
turns, and the result gave the free-state party the 
control of both branches of the territorial legisla- 
ture. 

The Lecompton convention met, pursuant to its 
adjournment, and framed a constitution, which, by 
its terms, could not be amended till 1864, and its 
provisions as to ownership in slaves not even then. 
The article entitled "Slavery" declared: "The 
right of property is before and higher than any 
constitutional sanction, and the right of the owner 
of a slave to such slave and its increase is the 
same, and as inviolable, as the right of the owner 
of any property whatever." 

Since the great majority of the people of Kansas 
considered the members of this convention as ma- 
lignants, and its whole proceedings as an insult, it 
was evident that to submit its constitution to a pop- 
ular vote would be merely to insure its rejection. 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 175 

To avoid this, the convention determined that the 
vote should be only upon the question whether 
the constitution should be adopted with slavery 
or without it. If the majority should be for the 
constitution with slavery, the article quoted was to 
remain; if for the constitution without slavery, 
then that article was to be stricken out; slavery 
was no longer "to exist in the State, except that 
the property in slaves already in the Territory 
should not be interfered with." This was not 
such a submission of the constitution to a vote 
of the people as Walker had promised. No pres- 
sure from Washington could induce him to accept 
it as a fulfillment of the requirements of the law 
and of the assurances he had made with the Presi- 
dent's sanction and approval. He left the Terri- 
tory, and, on arriving at Washington, finding 
himself at issue with the President on this vital 
point, resigned, rather than be a party to what he 
did not hesitate to pronounce a vile fraud. 

At the election ordered by the convention, the 
total vote was less than seven thousand. For the 
constitution without slavery there were five hun- 
dred and sixty -nine votes; for the constitution 
with slavery, sixty-one hundred and forty-three, 
of which three thousand and twelve were fraudu- 
lent. ^ 

When Walker left the Territory, the secretary, 
Frederic P. Stanton, of Tennessee, also a South- 
erner and a perfectly fair and upright man, became 
^ Wilder, Annals of Kansas, p. 156. 



176 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

acting governor. At the instance of the people 
of Kansas he summoned the newly elected legis- 
lature to meet in December. One of its first acts 
provided for a direct vote on the Lecompton Con- 
stitution, and at the election held for this purpose 
it was almost unanimously rejected, receiving only 
one hundred and sixty -two votes, out of ten thou- 
sand four hundred. On learning of Stanton's 
action, Buchanan at once removed him. 

In defense of his course as to Kansas the Presi- 
dent insisted that, as the vital question, whether 
they would have the constitution with or without 
slavery, had been submitted to the people, it was 
the same thing as if they had been allowed to vote 
directly on its adoption or rejection. He per- 
sisted in this statement in spite of his knowledge 
that the election ordered by the convention was 
not open to all qualified voters, but that every citi- 
zen, before he could deposit his ballot, was obliged 
to take an oath to support the Lecompton Consti- 
tution.^ He also knew that it had been proved 
that the settlers there were opposed to this consti- 
tution, by its rejection by an almost unanimous 
vote at an untrammeled election. 

When Congress met in December, it was quite 
understood that any Democrat who did not favor 
the admission of Kansas with the Lecompton Con- 
stitution would come under the ban of the admin- 
istration ; and Washington was full of speculations 
as to what Douglas would do. The numbers and 
^ Lecompton Const. Schedule, Sect. 7. 



^ 



:;n!:H|i 



^ V 



K 
t 



i^i 

^ 






l" ft 



" .1 



!^ r 



Vh 



^^ 






> 






5^ 



^ 

(^ 



I, r??'iT?t 



^ * S^vT' 




^j'r^.rflnM: 



^ . 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 177 

position of the Republicans in both branches of 
Congress had been constantly improving. " It did 
look well," wrote Seward, "to see the array of 
twenty solid men " on the floor of the Senate. 
There was no longer any attempt at the ostracism 
of which they had heretofore been the victims. 
"All personal antipathies and prejudices against 
the party and its members seemed to have disap- 
peared." The Southern and Democratic opposi- 
tion in social circles had given way, and society of 
all classes was profuse in its courtesies. As an 
illustration of the changed conditions, we find 
Seward, before the session is over, acting as peace- 
maker between Jefferson Davis and Senator Chan- 
dler of Michigan ; and, in connection with Critten- 
den and Jefferson Davis, settling a difficulty, in 
which Wilson of Massachusetts and Gwin of Cali- 
fornia were the opposing parties. The thorny, 
solitary path which the Republicans had here- 
tofore pursued was now abandoned to Douglas. 
The Southern Democrats transferred to him their 
former hatred of the Black Republicans, and their 
courtesies to the old anti-slavery men served to 
emphasize their treatment of the deserter. 

Arriving in Washington before the meeting of 
Congress, Douglas called on the President to dis- 
cuss the Kansas question. Buchanan said that he 
should recommend the admission of Kansas under 
the Lecompton Constitution; Douglas answered 
that he should denounce it in the Senate; and on 
the 9th of January he did so. " What can equal 



^ 



178 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

the caprices of politics!" wrote Seward. "The 
triumph of slavery [in 1850] would have been in- 
complete, indeed it could not have occurred, had 
it not been for the accession to it of Stephen A. 
Douglas. . . . By that defection he became soon, 
and has, until just now, continued (under the favor 
or fear of successive administrations) legislative 
dictator here, intolerant, yet irresistible. . . . 
That was his position yesterday morning. . . . 
Yesterday he broke loose from all that strong host 
he had led so long, and although he did not at the 
first bound reach my position, as an ally, yet 
leaped so far towards it as to gain a position of 
neutrality altogether unsafe and indefensible." 

Seward welcomed all accessions from the De- 
mocrats to the anti-Lecompton forces. "Since 
Walker, Douglas, and Stanton," he wrote, "have 
been converted, at least in part, we are sure to 
hear the gospel preached (though with adultera- 
tion) to the Gentiles." And, while many of the 
Republican leaders were distrustful of Douglas, he 
took the opposite view, saying : " God forbid that 
I should consent to see freedom wounded, because 
my own lead, or even my own agency in serving 
it, should be rejected. I will cheerfully cooperate 
with these new defenders of this sacred cause in 
Kansas, and I will award them all due praise for 
their large share of merit in its deliverance." 

The administration had staked its all upon sus- 
taining the Lecompton Constitution. Buchanan's 
message, transmitting it to Congress, showed his 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 179 

entire surrender to the extreme Southern opinion. 
"Kansas," he said, "is at this moment as much a 
slave State as Georgia or South Carolina." Be- 
fore his message was sent in, Denver, who had 
succeeded Walker as governor of Kansas, had en- 
deavored to dissuade him from sending to Congress 
the Lecompton Constitution, advising him strongly 
against his proposed policy. Buchanan answered 
that he had already shown his message and that 
the advice came too late. 

It was hardly to be expected that the debate on 
this question should add anything to what had 
already been said. The Southerners fell back on 
the doctrines of Chief Justice Taney, insisted that 
all the anti-slavery agitation had been aimed at 
the constitutional rights of the South, and that 
both the Missouri Compromise and the Wilmot 
Proviso were unconstitutional. 

In a speech, made early in March, Seward gave 
a highly colored sketch of a coalition between the 
executive and judicial departments of the govern- 
ment, to undermine the legislature and the liber- 
ties of the people, and of whispered conferences 
between the chief justice and the incoming Presi- 
dent before the delivery of the inaugural, which 
heralded, not the decision of the Dred Scott case, 
but the extra-judicial exposition of the Constitu- 
tion, which the chief justice was about to promul- 
gate. This drew from Judge Taney the declara- 
tion that, if Seward were elected president, he 
should decline to administer to him the oath of 



180 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

office, and from both Taney and Buchanan indig- 
nant denials of any snch conferences. But these 
denials did not meet the substance of the charges 
then made, not by Seward alone, but by many Re- 
publican leaders. These charges were, that the 
political passages were added by the chief justice 
after the result of the presidential election was 
known, and that their substance was communicated 
to Buchanan just before the 4th of March, to ena- 
ble him to make the announcement which he did 
in his inaugural address. Known facts justified 
the accusation, even though they did not conclu- 
sively prove it. It was understood that a majority 
of the judges, having reached the conclusion that 
Dred Scott, being of African descent, was not a 
citizen, and had therefore no standing in the courts 
of the United States, an opinion stating this con- 
clusion and the reasons for it, and nothing more, 
had been prepared, to be read as the judgment of 
the court; that the chief justice afterwards, and 
not long before the delivery of the judgment, 
added to his opinion the statement of his political 
conclusions, which — if they had been in any sense 
a decision of the court — would have fastened slav- 
ery irrevocably upon every foot of the territory of 
the United States. Buchanan's inaugural address 
substantially foreshadowed these conclusions as the 
result of the case, and it was known that the pas- 
sage in which he did this was added after his arri- 
val in Washington. It was insisted that it was 
quite incredible that he should have written this 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 181 

at that time unless he had received authentic in- 
formation of what the chief justice was to say. 

His long and unblemished judicial career and 
his patriotic motives have been urged as an excuse 
or apology for the chief justice's course in [this 
case, and it is perhaps only fair to him to suppose 
that he may have thought his political statement 
would be quietly accepted by the North as an au- 
thoritative and binding construction of the Consti- 
tution, and would put an end to all anti-slavery 
agitation there ; while, as it conceded to the South 
all that they could gain by separation, the motives 
for secession would no longer exist, and the Union 
would continue undisturbed. 

Other persons disapproved of Seward's speech 
for reasons of an opposite character. The aim of 
the Republicans was to secure Kansas to freedom ; 
and in the struggle of the moment — the question 
of its admission under the Lecompton Constitution 
— they had the support of several Democrats, 
among whom was Douglas, the author of the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, and for that reason, 
as well as for his qualities as a debater, a most 
powerful auxiliary. Seward had already publicly 
welcomed the accession of these new allies, and 
announced his cordial cooperation with them ; and 
in this speech, after declaring his opinion that "it 
would be wise to restore the Missouri prohibition 
of slavery in Kansas and Nebraska," he went on 
to say: "But I shall not insist now on so radi- 
cal a measure as the restoration of the Missouri 



182 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

prohibition. I know how difficult it is for power 
to relinquish even a pernicious and suicidal policy 
all at once. We may obtain the same result, in 
this particular case of Kansas, without going back 
so far. Go back only to the ground assumed in 
1854, the ground of popular sovereignty. Hap- 
pily for the authors of that measure, the zealous 
and energetic resistance of abuses practiced under 
it has so far been effective, that popular sover- 
eignty in Kansas may now be made a fact, and 
liberty there may be rescued from danger through 
its free exercise." It is difficult to see in this 
passage anything more than a recognition of the 
facts as they actually existed; but it gave offense 
to some persons, who thought it implied a readi- 
ness to condone the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise, and to welcome the cooperation of Doug- 
las, who, they considered, should have been re- 
ceived with reluctance, hesitation, and distrust. 

His speech on the Lecompton Constitution and 
convention is not one of Seward's best. It drags 
here and there ; but the wrongs of Kansas, as ma- 
terial for a speech, had ah'eady been worn thread- 
bare. There are certain passages, however, to 
which the South might well have given heed : — 

"The nation has reached the point where inter- 
vention by the government for slavery and slave 
States will no longer be tolerated. Free labor has 
at last apprehended its rights, its interests, its 
power, and its destiny, and is organizing itself to 
assume the government of the republic. It will 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 183 

henceforth meet you boldly and resolutely here; it 
will meet you everywhere, in the Territories or out 
of them, wherever you may go to extend slavery. 
. . . The interests of the white races demand the 
ultimate emancipation of all men. Whether that 
consummation shall be allowed to take effect with 
needful and wise precautions against sudden change 
and disaster, or be hurried on by violence, is all 
that remains for you to decide. ... It is for 
yourselves, not for us, to decide how long the con- 
test shall be protracted before freedom shall enjoy 
her already assured triumph. I would have it 
ended now. . . . But this can be done only in 
one way, — by the direct admission of the three 
new States [Kansas, Minnesota, and Oregon] as 
free States, . . . and by the abandonment of all 
further attempts to extend slavery under the fed- 
eral Constitution." 

The Kansas question, however, was not to be 
decided by argument, or by any sense of justice. 
The best men of the South did not venture to 
defend the Lecompton Constitution, or the pro- 
ceedings by which it came before Congress, or the 
course of the administration. The necessity of 
making Kansas a slave State was the governing 
motive with those who supported the bill. A few 
Southerners, notably Bell and Crittenden, opposed 
it. But the administration controlled the Senate, 
and its patronage and proscription were freely em- 
ployed to enable it to carry the House. The out- 
come of the whole matter for this session (1857-58) 



184 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

was the passage of a bill, — a new compromise, — 
by which the Lecompton Constitution was to be 
again submitted to the people of Kansas for adop- 
tion or rejection. If it should be adopted, the 
Territory would receive large grants of public lands, 
and be admitted at once as a State. If it should 
be rejected, Kansas was to remain a Territory for 
an indefinite period. The people spurned the 
bribe ; the constitution was a second time rejected 
by an overwhelming majority. Yet it was only 
when some Southern senators had already vacated 
their seats that the struggle was ended in January, 
1861, by the admission of Kansas as a free State. 

There was another matter before the Senate this 
winter, in which Seward's course was most severely 
condemned by some of his own party. The Mor- 
mons of Utah were in a state of open, if not of 
avowed rebellion. Troops were needed to compel 
their obedience and to maintain the authority of 
the government. The administration wished to 
raise two additional regiments for this purpose. 
The Republicans, distrusting the President and 
remembering the use to which the army had been 
put in Kansas, were opposed to giving him any 
such power. Seward thought the troops necessary 
for the purpose for which they were asked, and 
that the President should have the authority he 
desired. "It is," he said, "with a view to save 
life, to save the public peace, to bring the Territory 
of Utah into submission to the authorities of the 
land without bloodshed, that I favor the increase 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 185 

of force which is to be sent there." A letter from 
Senator Fessenden shows us how the Republicans 
of the Senate looked at the matter. "Some of 
our people," he wrote, "are frightened by the idea 
of refusing supplies in time of war. Seward, I 
understand, is to make a speech for the bill. He 
is perfectly bedeviled. He will vote alone, so far 
as the Republicans are concerned; but he thinks 
himself wiser than all of us." Hale spoke of him 
as the Judas Iscariot of the little company of Re- 
publicans in the Senate. Nevertheless he persisted 
in his opinion, and spoke and voted in favor of 
the bill, carrying out in his conduct the policy 
which he had insisted was correct at the beginning 
of the Mexican war a dozen years before, when he 
was still a private citizen. The bill, however, 
after being amended, was at last defeated by a 
vote which had no party significance or character, 
Toombs voting with Seward, and Mason and Sli- 
dell with Fessenden and Hale. Coercion of the 
Mormons became for the time unnecessary, as a 
truce was patched up between them and the gov- 
ernment. 

Subsequent events, however, showed that Sew- 
ard was right in his views of the necessity of re- 
ducing to strict obedience the Latter Day Saints; 
and had this been done earlier there would have 
been fewer or no unpunished outrages upon Chris- 
tians, no Danite bands, no cowardly midnight 
murders in Utah. Seward himself must have felt 
amply rewarded for his speech and action in the 



186 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

matter, when three years later he learned from 
more than one war Democrat that this speech 
had taught him to disregard unpatriotic party 
counsels, and to stand by the government and the 
Union. 

The historical interest of the political campaign 
of the summer and autumn of 1858 is practically 
confined to the debates between Lincohi and Doug- 
las ; but Seward in his speech at Rochester struck 
the keynote of the contest when he spoke of " The 
Irrepressible Conjlict between Freedom and Slav- 
ery. ^^ The idea was not a new one, though the 
expression was. If we read his speeches we shall 
find him often before struggling with a similar 
thought, but never till now finding the apt words 
which would best convey his meaning, and coining 
a phrase which became at once a part of our popu- 
lar speech. 

The substance of the Rochester address was an 
indictment of the Democratic party as sectional 
and local, with its principal seat in the slave 
States and its constituency almost exclusively 
there, but having in the free States a number of 
supporters sufficient to modify its sectional ap- 
pearance without altering its sectional character, 
committed therefore to the policy of slavery, and 
which had carried that policy to its then alarming 
culmination. The accusation was followed by a 
statement of the historical facts justifying it, and 
the speech had great weight in the autumn elec- 
tions. In the year before, the Republican party 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 187 

had suffered a grievous setback ; but the course of 
the President in endeavoring, by all the means at 
his command, to crowd through Congress and force 
upon Kansas a constitution odious to its inhabit- 
ants, and so tainted with fraud that even his own 
officers there. Southerners and slaveholders as they 
were, refused to sustain him, had done for the 
opponents of the administration what they could 
not have done for themselves. The Congress 
chosen in the autumn of 1858 elected, though only 
after a prolonged struggle, a Republican speaker. 
To the Senate no Northern Democrat was returned 
except Douglas, and the Republicans there now 
numbered twenty -four. 

Nothing was done in the short session ending 
on the 4th of March, 1859. The endeavors of the 
South to obtain a vote to put thirty millions of 
money into the hands of the President, in order 
to pave the way for a favorable negotiation as to 
the purchase of Cuba, signally failed ; and a home- 
stead bill, granting moderate quantities of public 
lands to actual settlers, and warmly pressed by the 
Republicans, shared the same fate. The antago- 
nism between the North and South was never more 
conspicuous than in the discussion of these mea- 
sures. The House, it was known, would not pass 
the Cuba bill, if sent down to them, but they had 
already passed the homestead bill, which was be- 
fore the Senate, and Seward urged laying aside 
Cuba to take up the homestead bill, saying: "The 
Senate may as well meet face to face the issue. 



188 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

. . . The homestead bill is a question of homes 
for the landless freemen of the United States. 
The Cuba bill is the question of slaves for the 
slaveholders of the United States." Toombs re- 
torted that, much as he despised senators who 
were demagogues, he despised still more those who 
were driven by demagogues, and who met a great 
question of national policy by the cry of land for 
the landless; on which Wade cried out: "Shall 
we give niggers to the niggerless or land to the 
landless? When you come to niggers for the 
niggerless all other questions sink into perfect in- 
significance." 

The summer and autumn of 1859 Seward passed 
in Europe. When he returned, the John Brown 
raid in Virginia had ended in the execution of its 
leader; Congress had assembled, and the two 
months' contest for the election of speaker was 
well under way. The several parties were already 
beginning to take their positions for the coming 
presidential campaign. The Senate was practi- 
cally under the control of the extreme pro-slavery 
leaders, who were determined to drive Douglas out 
of the Democratic party as a punishment for his 
opposition to the admission of Kansas under the 
Lecompton Constitution. For this purpose, Jef- 
ferson Davis offered a series of resolutions em- 
bodying the political doctrines enunciated by Judge 
Taney in the Dred Scott case, and the most ex- 
treme deductions to be made from them. These 
resolves were meant to be a complete statement of 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 189 

the true creed of the Democratic party on the sub- 
ject of slavery, as revised by the chief justice. 
The fundamental article was this : — 

'"'' Resolved, That neither Congress nor a territo- 
rial legislature, whether by direct legislation, or 
legislation of an indirect and unfriendly character, 
possesses power to annul or impair the constitu- 
tional right of any citizen of the United States to 
take his slave property into the common territories, 
and there hold and enjoy the same while the terri- 
torial condition remains." 

Special interest attaches to this resolution, from 
the fact that in the Democratic national convention 
of 1848 a resolve, offered by Mr. Yancey of Ala- 
bama, declaring: "That the doctrine of non-inter- 
ference with the right of property of any portion 
of the people of this confederacy, be it in the States 
or Territories thereof, by any other than the parties 
interested in them, is the true republican doctrine 
recognized by this body," was rejected by a vote 
of two hundred and sixteen to thirty-six; while 
against this resolution of Jefferson Davis, intro- 
duced in the Senate eleven years later, there was 
only one Democratic vote, that of Mr. Pugh of 
Ohio.^ The attitude of the Democracy as regards 
slavery was clearly not stationary. If the Repub- 
licans were advancing in the path of modern civili- 
zation, the Democrats were even more rapidly 
retrograding towards a government which should 
rest on slavery as its base. The Republicans stood 

1 Douglas was absent throughout, from illness. 



190 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

aloof, and left Davis's resolutions to be discussed 
by the Democrats. They were adopted by a strict 
party vote. 

Seward's most important speech during the ses- 
sion was on the bill for the admission of Kansas 
under a new constitution, framed by a convention 
held at Wyandot and composed of delegates from 
the actual settlers of the Territory. In this speech 
he discussed the general state of the country ; and 
in a sketch of the difference between the slave 
and free States, defined the former as States where 
the slave was regarded and protected, not as a man, 
but as the capital of another man, a special kind 
of capital entitled to be politically represented by 
its owners, and which, with the increase in slaves, 
had become a great political force; while in the 
free States the laborer, invigorated and developed 
by the rights of citizenship, was himself the domi- 
nating political power. He therefore classified the 
slave States as capital States, and the free States 
as labor States. Running a historical parallel 
between these two classes, he showed by the de- 
bates on the Missouri Compromise, — the first 
gi'eat struggle between them, — how easy it was to 
combine the capital States in defense even of 
their external interests, and how difficult to unite 
the labor States in any common policy; that the 
labor States were naturally loyal to the Union, 
while the capital States were quick to alarm that 
loyalty by threats of disunion, and either could 
not or would not distinguish between legitimate, 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 191 

constitutional opposition to the creation of new 
caj)ital States out of the common territory, and un- 
constitutional attacks upon slavery in the States 
where it already existed. The history of the two 
parties proved, he contended, that the Democratic 
party was generally found sustaining the policy of 
the capital States ; while the Whigs, being usually 
an opposition party, had practiced some forbear- 
ance towards the interests of labor, until, in an 
evil hour, the Whig representatives of the capital 
States concurred in the passage of the Kansas- 
Nebraska act, and the Whig party instantly went 
down, never to rise again. 

To the charge that the Republican party was a 
sectional one, and that its success would therefore 
justify secession, he answered: "Is the Democratic 
party less sectional? Is it easier for us to bear 
your sectional sway than for you to bear ours? Is 
it unreasonable that for once we should alternate? 
But is the Republican party sectional? Not un- 
less the Democratic party is. The Republican 
party prevails in the House of Representatives 
sometimes, the Democratic party in the Senate 
always. Which of the two is most proscriptive ? 
Come, if you wiU, into the free States anywhere, 
address the people, submit to them fully all your 
complaints of Northern disloyalty, oppression, 
prejudice, speaking just as freely and loudly as 
you do here; you will have hospitable welcomes 
and ballot-boxes for all the votes you can win. . . . 
Extend to us the same privileges and I wiU engage 



192 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

that you will have very soon in the South as many 
Republicans as we have Democrats in the North. 
. . . Our policy of labor in the Territories was not 
sectional during the first forty years of the repub- 
lic ; it will be national again during the third forty 
years, and forever afterwards." He minimized 
the dangers of disunion, not because he underrated 
the earnestness of the leaders of secession, but be- 
cause he believed that, refine as one might about 
the nature of the Constitution, calling it a compact 
between States, a breach of any article of which 
by one State would absolve all the others from 
their allegiance, yet it would be found, on any 
attempt to subvert it, to be a government of the 
whole people, in which every member was con- 
scious of his interest and power, and which was 
indestructible from the millions of fibres by which 
it was interwoven with the affections, the ambi- 
tions, and the hopes of all citizens of all classes. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860 

The Democratic national convention of 1856 
had determined to hold that of 1860 at Charleston, 
South Carolina; it accordingly met there towards 
the end of April. The irreconcilable difference 
between the supporters of the administration and 
the followers of Douglas made any agreement as 
to a platform impossible; and, on the failure of 
the resolutions proposed by the South, forty-five 
of the one hundred and twenty Southern delegates 
withdrew. The convention adjourned to Baltunore 
and there nominated Douglas for the presidency; 
Herschel V. Johnston, of Georgia, being after- 
wards added as the nominee for vice-president. 
The seceding delegates held a separate convention, 
and chose as their candidates John C. Brecken- 
ridge of Kentucky, and Joseph Lane of Oregon. 
The Constitutional Union party, the survivors of 
the Native American organization, put John Bell, 
of Tennessee, at the head of their ticket, and gave 
the second place to Edward Everett, of Massachu- 
setts. 

The Republican convention assembled at Chi- 
cago on the 16th of May. The organization, 



194 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

preparation, and adoption of the platform occupied 
the first two days, and it was the general expecta- 
tion both of his friends and opponents that Seward 
would be nominated on the following morning. 
It was known that there was opposition to him, 
yet it was thought that the different elements com- 
posing it would not be able to unite on any candi- 
date. But on the third ballot Abraham Lincoln, 
of Illinois, was nominated, a change of four votes 
of the Ohio delegation from Chase to Lincoln giv- 
ing him the requisite majority. There is no ques- 
tion that to the Kepublican party, as a whole, this 
nomination was at the time a bitter disappoint- 
ment. Lincoln was a man comparatively un- 
known. He had served in one Congress without 
distinction, and would gladly when his term was 
over have accepted a subordinate office. Four 
years earlier he had received a respectable vote on 
an informal ballot as a candidate for vice-president 
on the ticket with Fremont; but this was hardly 
remembered at the time of his nomination in 18G0. 
His campaign with Douglas had brought him into 
more prominence, had shown him to be a clear 
thinker, and very ready and formidable in debate; 
but the interest in that discussion was compara- 
tively limited; and he was best known at the East 
by his address at the Cooper Institute in New 
York, on the 27th of February, 1860. He was a 
very popular local politician, but was hardly recog- 
nized elsewhere as a rising man with anything 
that could be called a national reputation. The 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860 195 

opposition to Seward, adopting the policy pursued 
in previous conventions by the opponents of the 
great men of the respective parties, united on Lin- 
cohi as a more or less colorless candidate. 

So far as the success of the Republican party in 
1860 was not the inevitable outcome of the con- 
stantly increasing demands and pressure of the 
South, and the consequent resistance of the North, 
it was the work of William H. Seward more than 
of any other single individual. He had labored to 
this end for many years; his speeches had been 
printed in different languages, and circulated by 
millions, and had produced the deepest and widest 
effect on public opinion. At the South he was 
fully recognized as the leader of his party, the 
price set on his head there being fifty thousand 
dollars, while only twenty -five hundred was offered 
for that of any other prominent Republican. 

A Southern newspaper did no more than justice 
to his position, when its editor wrote: "Mr. Sew- 
ard is a great political leader. Unlike others who 
are willing to follow in the wake of popular senti- 
ment, Seward leads. He stands head and shoul- 
ders above them all. He marshals his forces and 
directs the way. The Abolition host follow. 
However we may differ from William H. Seward, 
we concede to him honesty of purpose, and the 
highest order of talent. He takes no halfway 
grounds, he does nothing by halves. . . . He is 
at once the greatest and most dangerous man in 
the government. . . . For eighteen years he has 



196 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

stood forth in the Senate of the United States, the 
great champion of freedom, and the stern opposer 
of slavery." If one turns from the estimate of 
opponents to the judgment of his political friends, 
the words of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, 
in indorsing the nomination of Lincoln, do not 
exaggerate the appreciation of Seward at that time 
in the Republican party : — 

"The affection of our hearts and the judgment 
of our intellects bound our political fortunes to 
William H. Seward, — to him, who is the highest 
and most shining light of this political generation, 
— to him who, by the unanimous selection of the 
foes of our cause, and our own, has for years been 
the determined standard-bearer of liberty." A 
Democratic newspaper announced the result of the 
convention in an article entitled " Actaeon devoured 
by his own Dogs;" and this heading had quite 
enough truth in it to give it point, and to need no 
explanation for even the dullest and most obtuse. 

Seward's failure to obtain the nomination at 
Chicago was due to a variety of causes. The in- 
fluence to be attributed to the defection of Horace 
Greeley was probably exaggerated at the time; 
and the episode is mostly interesting for the light 
it throws upon the characters of the two men. 
Greeley was commonly thought to be an unselfish 
patriot, but he had at bottom a hunger for office, 
and, as his conduct to Seward shows, a strong 
appetite for revenge. As has been already stated, 
he was very much disappointed at not receiving 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860 197 

the nomination for governor of New York in 1854, 
and still more chagrined that his old associate and 
subsequent rival, Henry J. Raymond, was nomi- 
nated for lieutenant-governor by the very conven- 
tion in which he himself had been defeated. There 
is nothing to show that Seward personally had any- 
thing to do with this result, though Weed, believ- 
ing it essential to success, had undoubtedly done 
what he could to bring it about; there were, how- 
ever, so many objections to nominating Greeley, 
that it may be doubted whether Seward's active 
intervention in his behalf would have been of any 
avail. The election was extremely close. A 
change of less than two hundred votes would have 
altered the result; and the party was evidently 
wise, in so close a contest, in declining to handicap 
themselves with a candidate of such pronounced 
opinions, the eager advocate of so many visionary 
schemes as Greeley was considered to be. Greeley 
himself subsequently admitted that he could not 
have been chosen. Just after the election, when 
he was still extremely sore, he wrote Seward a 
letter, complaining of the treatment he had re- 
ceived, notifying him that he could no longer rely 
on his support, and that the so-called partnership 
of Seward, Weed, and Greeley was at an end. 
So far was Seward, however, from penetrating 
Greeley's real meaning, that he shortly afterwards 
wrote to Weed : " I have a long letter from Gree- 
ley, full of sharp, pinching thorns. I judge, as we 
might indeed well know, from his, at the bottom, 



198 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

nobleness of disposition, that he has no idea of 
saying or doing anything wrong or unkind; but it 
is sad to see him so unhappy. Will there be a 
vacancy in the board of regents of the Univer- 
sity of New York this winter? Could one be 
made at the close of the session, could he have it? 
Raymond's nomination and election is hard for 
him to bear. ... I think this a good letter to 
burn. I wish I could do Greeley so great a favor 
as to burn his." 

Seward did not suffer this letter to interfere 
with the personal relations between himself and 
Greeley; and though Greeley opposed Seward's 
nomination in 1856, yet, if his opposition was 
based on personal grounds, he carefully concealed 
them. Ten days after the convention of that year 
he called on Seward in Washington, and wished 
to be congratulated on having done the very best 
thing in the very best way. In the spring of 1859 
he succeeded in satisfying a politician so astute as 
Weed that he was all right politically and "seek- 
ing to be useful" in California, whither he was 
going; and he dined with Seward on the eve of 
his departure. 

He was not a delegate from New York to the 
Republican convention of 1860; but he procured 
an appointment as svibstitute from Oregon, and 
going to Chicago in this capacity, devoted his time 
and energy to defeating Seward. He nominally 
advocated the candidacy of Edward Bates of Mis- 
souri, but was ready to support anybody to beat 



THE REPUBLICAN COxWENTION OF 1860 199 
Seward; and it has been said that, when Seward 
was actually defeated, he openly gave thanks that 
lie was even with him at last. 

Seward had shown Greeley's letter of 1854 to 
no one; but after the convention there began to be 
rumors of its existence, and Greeley himself finally 
prmted It in the "Tribune." Its publication drew 
from Weed an article in which he said: "Havino- 
remamed for six years in blissful ignorance of its 
contents, we should have much preferred to have 
ever remained so. It jars harshly upon cherished 
memories. It destroys ideals of disinterestedness 
and generosity which relieved political life from 
so much that is selfish, sordid, and rapacious." 
Ihe impartial reader, who wishes to think well of 
(jreeley, will probably agree with Weed. 

Greeley's unaided exertions would hardly have 
resulted in Seward's defeat. There were other 
more powerful elements at work for that end. 
The body of the Republican party was composed 
of old Whigs; but even among these there were 
not wanting some conservatives who had ioined 
the party late and half reluctantly, and who still 
thought Seward almost dangerously radical. To 
those who had supported FiUmore in 1856 his 
nomination would not have been acceptable; and 
the Democratic Free Soilers of '48, who had voted 
for Van Buren, and were now in full Republican 
communion, were at heart strongly opposed to Sew- 
ard. They might put their opposition nominaUy 
on various grounds; but the fundamental reason 



200 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

was that he had always been a Whig, till that party 
perished, and never a Democrat. Those members 
of the convention who had been members of the 
Know -Nothing party remembered Seward's steady 
and uniform opposition to and denunciation of 
that party and its proscrij)tive doctrines. Many 
Republicans in Pennsylvania and Indiana were 
still Know-Nothings, slightly covered with a thin 
varnish of Republicanism; and the respective can- 
didates for governor in these two States professed 
to think it impossible to succeed at their state elec- 
tions in October, if Seward were the national can- 
didate, and were therefore earnest to defeat his 
nomination; Cameron of Pennsylvania, who was 
thought to favor Seward, did not appear at the 
convention and took no steps in his behalf, and 
Ohio had a favorite son, Chase, whom she pre- 
ferred to him. Some Republicans of more or less 
prominence nominally placed their opposition to 
Seward on the ground of their distrust of a New 
York politician; they objected to his connection 
with Weed; they admitted him to be personally 
honest, but thought him not sufficiently averse to 
jobs for his friends. These objections came mainly 
from persons who, had they fully expressed their 
minds, would have given other reasons why they 
wished he should not be nominated. If they had 
any effect upon the action of the convention, it 
was so trifling that it need not be taken into ac- 
count. The nomination was determined by other 
and quite different influences. 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860 201 

Lincoln was most ambitious for the nomination, 
and had been working eagerly for it for months. 
He was personally a much more adroit politician 
than Seward, who practically, during his whole 
public life, relied on Thurlow Weed to manage 
for him. Lincoln's forces were well organized; 
he had an earnest committee, determined to suc- 
ceed, and not over-scrupulous as to the means; 
and as the convention was at Chicago, they were 
on their own ground and supported by all the local 
influences. The question was how to consolidate 
upon Lincoln all the elements of the opposition to 
Seward. This difficulty was solved on the night 
preceding the nomination, by the chairman of Lin- 
coln's committee promising to Caleb Smith, of In- 
diana, a place in Lincoln's cabinet in return for 
the vote of that delegation, and giving a similar 
pledge in favor of Simon Cameron to the delega- 
tion from Pennsylvania, on the assurance of its 
support; the votes of these two delegations, with 
a change of votes by a few wavering members 
from Ohio, secured Lincoln's nomination. Lin- 
coln had telegraphed his committee to make no 
bargains for him; nevertheless he did not after- 
wards repudiate their promises, and Caleb Smith 
and Cameron were both in his first cabinet. 

When the news arrived at Auburn, and no one 
else there had the heart to prepare for the " Daily 
Republican " newspaper a paragraph approving 
the nomination, Seward himself wrote : " No truer 
or firmer defenders of the Republican faith could 



202 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

have been found . . . tlian the distinguished . . . 
citizens on whom the honors of the nomination 
have fallen." None the less keenly, however, did 
he feel himself to be "a leader deposed by his own 
party in the hour of organization for decisive bat- 
tle." Yet instead of merely acquiescing in the 
result of the convention, and remaining quietly at 
home, as he might fairly enough have done, he 
put forth all his energies to insure the success of 
his party, and devoted five weeks to a political 
campaign in New York and the Northwest, espe- 
cially in those States which had been his ardent 
supporters in the convention. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE WINTER OF 1860-61 

The narrative of the events of the winter suc- 
ceeding the election of Lincohi forms one of the 
most mortifying and melancholy chapters in our 
national history. The withdrawal of the Southern 
Democratic leaders from their party convention, 
and their nomination of a separate candidate in 
the summer of 1860, was a mere prelude to the 
secession of the States they represented. It ren- 
dered the election of Lincoln certain, and thus 
furnished the pretext they wanted for carrying out 
their long cherished scheme of breaking up the 
Union and forming a new Southern confederacy, 
of which slavery should be the corner-stone and 
cotton the king. They were not alarmed at the 
prospect of any injury to their property in slaves, 
or of any diminution of their material prosperity 
in consequence of the Republican victory. The 
Democratic control in Congress not only made 
them absolutely secure from attack, but left the 
incoming Republican president powerless to ap- 
point a single public officer, from the members of 
his cabinet down, who would not be satisfactory to 
the South, — or to carry any measure, or pursue 



204 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

any policy, which did not have its approval. 
Moreover, there were practically no open issues, 
by the decision of which the interests of the South 
could be materially affected. The Dred Scott 
case, it was claimed, had settled the right to hold 
slaves in all the Territories of the United States; 
it could not be modified until the political com- 
plexion of the Supreme Court should be changed, 
and this would be, of necessity, a process requiring 
many yea;i's and a succession of presidents of the 
same political opinions. The excitement, both 
North and South, about the Fugitive Slave Law 
had practically died out; and the secession move- 
ment had no strength in the border States, the only 
ones having a material interest in the observance 
of this law, or suffering from its evasion. 

The real grievance was one which could not well 
be formulated or put forward as a ground for 
breaking up the Union. For half a century the 
cotton States and Virginia had governed the coun- 
try; they had controlled its policy, made its wars, 
annexed new territory, nominated presidents, and 
filled the government bureaus and departments. 
They foreboded from this election the end of their 
political domination, and\determined to go off by 
themselves, having faith that the world's need of 
their great staple would bring them, should the 
United States use force to prevent their carrying 
out their plans, the recognition of their independ- 
ence by the leading countries of Europe, if not 
more material support. "Our leaders and public 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 205 

men, who have taken hold of this question," wrote 
Alexander H. Stephens, "do not desire to continue 
the Union on any terms. They do not wish any 
redress of wrongs; they are disunionists ^^er se, 
and avail themselves of present circumstances to 
press their objects." ^ 

South Carolina was in the van of the movement. 
Preliminary conferences had been held in Charles- 
ton as early as September, 1860, and at a private 
meeting of the leading men on the 25th of October 
it was unanimously resolved that South Carolina 
should secede in the event of Lincoln being chosen 
president. To the legislature which assembled on 
the 5th of November, the day before the presiden- 
tial election, the governor in his message declared 
that, should the Republican party carry that elec- 
tion, the only course for South Carolina would be 
to secede from the federal Union; that political 
indications justified the conclusion that other States 
would immediately follow her, and that the long 
desired cooperation for which they had been wait- 
ing would soon be realized. From this time South 
Carolina marched forward in her revolutionary 
course with steady steps, and, as the governor had 
foreseen, the other cotton States were not slow to 
follow. Before the end of November the prelimi- 
nary steps had been taken in eight Southern States ; 
within two months afterwards, six of them — 
South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mis- 
sissippi, and Louisiana — had passed ordinances 
1 November 30, 1860. 



206 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

of secession; by the middle of February Texas 
had united with them to form a Southern Confed- 
erac}'^, which had chosen a complete set of officers 
to administer its government. They had also 
seized for their own use all the forts, arsenals, and 
other public property and moneys of the United 
States in the South, unfortunately left without 
guard or protection, except Fort Sumter, off 
Charleston, which Major Anderson was holding 
with a handful of men, and Fort Pickens, at Pen- 
sacola, into which a gallant subaltern, Lieutenant 
Slemmer, had thrown himself with his company. 

The moment selected for the outbreak of the 
secession conspiracy was most auspicious. The 
administration at Washington had no sympathy 
whatever with the Republican party or the domi- 
nant sentiment of the North. Four of Buchanan's 
cabinet were from the South, and three of these 
were either open or ill-disguised secessionists, — 
while every one of the Northern members was a 
pro-slavery Democrat, untainted by any of the 
heresies which had split the party in 1848, and 
either indifferent to, or else a supporter of, the 
violence and fraud by which the South had under- 
taken to gain Kansas for slavery, as well as of the 
administration's policy toward that Territory. All 
the departments swarmed with Southern rebels. 
Washington society was a hot-bed of treason and 
secession, wholly Southern in its sympathies; and 
extremists from the South were the closest com- 
panions and friends of the President. His term 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 207 

was nearly over, and the secession leaders relied 
on his political and personal proclivities and inti- 
macies, and on his general reluctance to take re- 
sponsibility, increased, as they knew it would be, 
by the fact that he was merely holding over until 
the inauguration of his successor, as sufficient to 
prevent any aggressive action on his part. 

The President's annual message, sent to Con- 
gress on the 3d of December, did not disappoint 
these anticipations. It took the Northern States 
and j)eople severely to task for the existing condi- 
tion of things, for which, it said, they were wholly 
to blame. Secession was unlawful; of that there 
could be no question; but the coercion of a State 
was equally unlawful, and in the political dilemma, 
which he had thus reached, the President left the 
subject to Congress and the country. It was gen- 
erally known that these views had not merely the 
support of the cabinet, but were the conclusions of 
the attorney-general, submitted to the President 
in a labored opinion. Thus encouraged, the South- 
ern leaders had little hesitation in following their 
inclinations, and crossing, one by one, the narrow 
Rubicon which divides idle declamation, vaporing 
threats, and empty braggadocio from actual rebel- 
lion and treason. Within a month matters had 
gone so far that South Carolina, having removed 
the buoys and extinguished the lights in her har- 
bors, and occupied by hostile troops all the forts 
except Sumter, was sending commissioners to 
Washington to treat with the government as a 



208 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

foreign power. She insisted, as a preliminary to 
all negotiations, upon the immediate evacuation of 
Sumter, on the ground that the presence of the 
United States troops there was a standing menace 
to her sovereignty. Under these circumstances 
the attorney -general revised his opinion; and ap- 
proaching the questions presented him from a dif- 
ferent point of view, reached the conclusion that 
it was the President's clear constitutional right 
and duty to defend the public property, to resist 
by force any attempt to drive the troops of the 
United States from any of its fortifications, and 
to use both the army and navy, if necessary, for 
the purpose of aiding the proper officers in the 
execution of the laws. Had he been convinced of 
this a month earlier, and satisfied the President's 
mind then, it is possible that the rebellion might 
have been nipped in the bud; though it is ex- 
tremely doubtful if the small force disposable for 
this purpose would have been sufficient to effect 
much, unless the message and the proceedings of 
the government had evinced such a resolute pur- 
pose that the Southern leaders would have hesitated 
about precipitating a conflict. By the end of the 
year they had gone too far, and kindled their own 
and their people's j^assions to such an extent that 
retreat was no longer possible. 

The attorney -general succeeded, however, after a 
severe struggle, in bringing the President to his own 
standpoint. The cabinet was purged of the seces- 
sionists (Cobb of Georgia, Thomas of Maryland, 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 209 

who succeeded him, Floyd of Virginia, and Thomp- 
son of Mississippi), and their places were filled by 
Dix, Stanton, and Holt; the White House ceased 
to be the rendezvous of Benjamin, Mason, Slidell, 
and Jefferson Davis, the conspirators of the Sen- 
ate; and the efforts of the administration were 
loyally and vigorously bent towards keeping the 
government intact for delivery to its regularly 
elected successors. 

Meantime, the bold and defiant attitude of the 
cotton States and their hasty and rapid strides 
towards secession had caused much alarm and a 
good deal of vacillation of opinion and feeling at 
the North, even among the supporters of Lincoln. 
Leading Republican newspapers were suggesting 
that our erring brethren should be allowed to go 
in peace. There were meetings in the large cities 
recommending concessions to save the Union, — 
the concessions suggested amounting in some cases 
to an abandonment of everything for which the 
Republican party had contended ; and in the press 
and elsewhere there were from time to time hints 
that, should there be any attempt at coercion, the 
men from the North might find from their homes 
a fire in their rear. 

When Congress assembled, the aspect of affairs 
inspired the loyal members of both Houses with 
profound gloom and anxiety. They knew that 
Washington was the centre of innumerable plots 
and intrigues, all having for their object the 
destruction of the Union. They felt themselves 



210 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

absolutely powerless, and the administration, which 
was then controlled by its Southern leaders, they 
considered worse than powerless, believing it to be 
the mere tool of the enemies of the country. In 
this great crisis no man distinguished himself as 
a leader. Many men of experience in public af- 
fairs, of character, resolution, and intelligence, 
seemed hopelessly bewildered ; they made speeches, 
proposed and voted for measures, and took posi- 
tions, which are only to be explained by their de- 
sire to postpone any violent outbreak until after 
the 4th of March, lest on that day Washington 
should be in the hands of the rebels, and Lincoln 
trying to find some safe retreat where he might 
take the oath of office as president of the United 
States. This fear was by no means a groundless 
panic, but a well justified apprehension. From 
early in January, 1861, the senators from seven 
Southern States were sitting in a room at the 
Capitol, as a revolutionary coimcil, directing every 
movement toward secession, and preparing the 
programme to be carried out in the formation of 
the Confederacy. There were several months when 
the capture of Washington by surprise would have 
been perfectly feasible ; but so long as Buchanan, 
the President whom the South had elected, and 
who had faithfully done its bidding, was in office, 
it was not easy to find a pretext for seizing the 
capital. To do so would have been, not the asser- 
tion of independence, but an act of offensive war- 
fare, for which the seceding States were not yet 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 211 

prepared; and so they delayed; the chances for 
the success of a sudden attack were constantly 
diminishing, yet it was never certain until some 
time after Lincohi's inauguration that such an 
attack would not be made, and Washington be 
captured. 

It needs but little reflection to convince one that 
the plan of letting our erring brethren depart in 
peace was impracticable and visionary; that it 
would have merely postponed till after the recogni- 
tion of their secession and independence the settle- 
ment of difficulties, which would then surely have 
given rise to war. An independent North would 
never have consented to return a fugitive slave to 
the seceded South; yet the Southern Confederacy 
must have insisted at all hazards on some provision 
for this purpose, in any treaty of separation, or 
they would have lost rather than gained by seces- 
sion. The policy of conciliation, however, ac- 
quired new strength from its advocacy in various 
New York papers, and especially from an editorial 
by Thurlow Weed, which was supposed to have 
been inspired by Seward, and to represent his 
views. Seward had in fact no knowledge of the 
article before its publication, and Weed was alone 
responsible for it. But the personal and political 
relations between Seward and Weed naturally 
gave rise to suspicions of his connection with it, 
and these were confirmed by the positive state- 
ment at the office of the New York "Tribune" 
that Seward not only wrote the article, but was 



212 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

meditating a great compromise after the fashion of 
Clay and Webster. This whole statement, whether 
malicious or not, was absolutely false, and it an- 
noyed Seward extremely. He had nothing in view, 
no j)lan but to wait, drifting like the rest. "I am 
thus far silent," he writes to his wife,^ "not be- 
cause I am thinking of proposing compromises, 
but because I wish to avoid, myself, and restrain 
other Republicans from intermeddling just now, 
when concession, or solicitation, or solicitude would 
encourage, and demonstrations of firmness of pur- 
pose would exasperate;" and again, a day or 
two later, he says: "Another day in the Senate. 
Vaporing by Southern senators ; setting forth the 
grievances of their section, and requiring Northern 
senators to answer, excuse, and offer terms which 
they are told in the same breath will not be ac- 
cepted." 2 

He was desirous, if possible, to find some solu- 
tion of the "difficult task of trying to reconcile 
the factious men bent on disunion, reckless of civil 
war, to the ascendency of an administration based 
on the principles of justice and humanity." But 
he had no faith that any constitutional amendment 
that might be proposed would be of any avail. 
He had written earlier : " No amendment that can 
be proposed, and would be satisfactory, can get 
two thirds of both houses, although just such 
amendments might pass three fourths of the States 
in convention." 

1 December 8, 1860. ^ December 11, 1860. 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 213 

Besides his conviction that the Fabian policy- 
was the best, Seward had another reason for si- 
lence. He must have shared the general expecta- 
tion that he would be offered a seat in Lincoln's 
cabinet, and was therefore unwilling to make or 
assent to any proposals which might not meet the 
approval of the incoming president, or be in ac- 
cord with the policy of his administration. Ten 
days after the meeting of Congress a letter from 
Mr. Lincoln invited him to become secretary of 
state ; and he left Washington that he might con- 
sult his wife and Weed before coming to a deci- 
sion. 

He was by no means certain what he had better 
do, and wished for some more definite knowledge 
as to who were likely to be his associates in the 
cabinet, and as to Mr. Lincoln's general policy. 
Weed had already been asked to come to Spring- 
field for a conference with the President-elect, and 
at Seward's suggestion he decided to go at once. 
While he was there Mr. Lincoln talked to him 
with entire frankness, and Weed in return stated 
his own opinions with absolute freedom. Weed 
came away, satisfied that Chase was to be secre- 
tary of the treasury, and Bates attorney-general, 
that Indiana was to have a place in the cabinet, 
and that Pennsylvania would probably be repre- 
sented there by Cameron, that Gideon Welles was 
to be secretary of the navy, and that the only re- 
maining post was likely to be offered to Montgom- 
ery Blair. Against these last two nominations 



214 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

Weed protested strongly. Many men might be 
named, he said with perfect truth, any one of whom 
would be more satisfactory to New England, and 
better qualified to be secretary of the navy, than 
Mr. WeUes. He was satisfied, however, that 
what he said did not affect Mr. Lincoln's previous 
decision, though he did not learn till much later 
that this appointment was made at the vice-presi- 
dent's special request. To Blair he objected, be- 
cause he represented nobody and had no following ; 
because his appointment would be obnoxious to 
the Union men of Maryland, who were old Whigs, 
while he had been always a Democrat, and till 
1858 an office-holder under Buchanan; and also 
because, though he was now called a citizen of 
Maryland, he actually lived in the District of Co- 
lumbia. To appoint both Welles and Blair would, 
Weed urged, give an undue prominence in the 
administration to the Democratic element among 
the Republicans, as it would leave the Whigs, 
who were a majority in the party, in a minority 
in the cabinet. It was evident to him, however, 
"that the selection of Montgomery Blair was a 
fixed fact," unless some Union man from one of 
the more southern States, who was of undoubted 
loyalty and acceptable to Lincoln, could be pre- 
vailed on to take the place. At Weed's instance, 
Mr. Lincoln made the attempt to induce a gentle- 
man of this description to come into the cabinet, 
but the hopelessness of keeping these States in the 
Union made all efforts in this direction fruitless. 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 215 

On his journey home Weed saw Seward, told 
him all he had learned as to the plans for the cabi- 
net, and also the concessions which Lincoln was 
willing to make for peace and harmony. Seward 
returned at once to Washington, and after think- 
ing over the matter for two or three days, in the 
light of the information he had received from 
Weed, whose conclusions as to the composition of 
the cabinet were subsequently shown to be abso- 
lutely correct, he wrote to Mr. Lincoln that, after 
due reflection and with much self -distrust, he had 
concluded that, should he be nominated and con- 
firmed as secretary of state, it would be his duty 
to accept the appointment. 

During Seward's absence at Auburn, Crittenden 
had offered in the Senate a series of resolutions 
proposing various constitutional amendments. The 
Missouri Compromise was to be restored, and ex- 
tended to the Pacific; the Fugitive Slave Law was 
to be amended, so that the government should pay 
for a rescued slave ; there were to be constitutional 
provisions, prohibiting Congress from abolishing 
slavery in any place under its exclusive jurisdiction 
in a slaveholding State, — or in the District of 
Columbia (so long as slavery existed in Maryland 
or Virginia); and from interfering with the trans- 
portation of slaves by land or water from any one 
slave State or Territory to any other slave State 
or Territory. 

The resolutions were referred to a select com- 
mittee of thirteen, of whom Seward was one, who 



216 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

were " to consider the grievances between the slave- 
hokling and non-slaveholding States, and to sug- 
gest if possible a remedy." At the close of the 
first day's session of this committee, he wrote to his 
wife : " We came to no compromise, and we shall 
not." Toombs makes Seward responsible for this 
result. "I supported Crittenden's compromise," 
he says, "heartily and sincerely, although the sul- 
len obstinacy of Seward made it almost impossible 
to do anything. ... At length I saw that the 
compromise must fail. With a persistent obsti- 
nacy that I have never yet seen surpassed, Seward 
and his backers refused every overture. I then 
telegraphed to Atlanta : ' All is at an end. North 
determined ; Seward will not budge an inch. Am 
in favor of secession.' " 

On his first meeting with the committee Seward 
offered, with the unanimous consent of the other 
Republican members, three propositions embody- 
ing the concessions which they understood Mr. 
Lincoln would sanction. These were: Firsts A 
constitutional amendment providing that the Con- 
stitution should never be altered so as to authorize 
Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the 
States. Second: A modification of the Fugitive 
Slave Act so as to secure to any alleged fugitive 
from service a trial by jury in the State where he 
was arrested. Third: A recommendation to all 
the States to revise their legislation concerning 
persons recently resident in other States, and to 
repeal all such laws as were in contravention of 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 217 

the Constitution of the United States or of any 
law of Congress in pursuance thereof .^ And later, 
with the concurrence of the other Republicans, he 
offered a fourth resolution : That Congress should 
pass a law to punish all persons engaged in the 
armed invasion of one State from another or in 
complicity with such invasions. 

Nothing, however, came of Crittenden's resolu- 
tions, or of Seward's propositions. Neither the 
Senate committee of thirteen, nor a more numerous 
committee appointed by the House for a similar 
purpose, nor a Peace Convention assembled in 
Washington later in the winter at the invitation of 
Virginia, were able to make any suggestions which 
would be acceptable to the North, and would also 
induce the South to abandon its scheme of seces- 
sion. The only effect of all the conferences and 
discussions was to postpone any further overt acts 
by the South and to enable Buchanan to see his 
successor inaugurated as the nominal President of 
the whole United States. The Republicans ex- 
pected nothing more, and were only fearful lest 
this should not be safely accomplished. The se- 
ceding South meant to break up the Union, and 
could only have been diverted from its purpose by 
the acquiescence of the North in the substance of 
the demands set forth in the resolutions offered by 
Jefferson Davis in the Senate's select committee, 

1 This was aimed at the peraoual liberty bills of the North, 
the laws of South Carolina as to colored seamen and the similar 
statutes of other States. 



218 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

which proposed: "That it should be declared by 
an amendment of the Constitution, that property 
in slaves, recognized as such by the local law of 
any of the States of the Union, shall stand on the 
same footing in all constitutional and federal rela- 
tions as any other species of property so recog- 
nized; and like other property shall not be sub- 
ject to be divested or impaired by the local law 
of any other State, either in escape thereto, or by 
the transit or sojourn of the owner therein. And 
in no case whatever shall such property be sub- 
ject to be divested or impaired by any legislative 
act of the United States or any of the Territories 
thereof." 

"The people of the South, all of the Southern 
States," wrote Seward, "are in the lead of reck- 
less politicians. They are bent on coercing the 
free States into a recognition of slavery, and 
failing that, into a civil war and disunion." To 
this recognition, whether by amendments to the 
Constitution or otherwise, no Republican could 
assent. 

The debates of the winter, the wide-spread pub- 
licity given to the pretensions of the South, the 
peremptoriness and arrogance with which its claims 
were insisted on, and the rejection of every scheme 
of compromise or adjustment proposed by any 
Northern senator or representative, brought home 
to the people of the free States a realizing sense 
of the impossibility of preventing the South from 
attempting to break up the Union, unless they 



THE WINTER OP 1860-61 219 

were prepared to concede that this was a gov- 
ernment in every part of which negroes might be 
lawfully held in bondage, and which had for the 
object of its existence the maintenance and per- 
petuation of African slavery. 

In this winter of talk Seward made a speech, on 
the 12th of January, in which he endeavored to set 
before the country a picture — drawn in colors as 
glowing as possible — of the advantages of the 
Union ; to describe what it had done for us, how 
under it we had grown from feeble colonists to a 
great nation, happy and prosperous at home, re- 
spected and feared abroad; and to contrast with 
this the result which would follow the dissolution 
of the government into several confederacies, each 
of which would be unimportant and disregarded; 
each would have its own policy, and would en- 
deavor to stipulate with other countries for ar- 
rangements advantageous to itself, though injuri- 
ous to its neighbors. Their mutual jealousies 
would encourage civil wars, which must ultimately 
result in the loss of their liberties and the destruc- 
tion of their independent republican governments. 
Neither North nor South would suffer the other 
section to possess our entire national domain, nor 
would any peaceable division of this be possible. 
The resources of the slave States might be called 
on to put down risings of the slaves, or possibly to 
meet invasions more extensive and formidable than 
John Brown's attack upon Harper's Ferry. Dis- 
solution would arrest the growth of the country, 



220 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

paralyze its industries and commerce, and substi- 
tute, for the brilliant constellation of our United 
States, the feeble light of small groups, or the un- 
certain glimmer of solitary stars. 

While not even for peace and the maintenance 
of the Union would he make concessions that in- 
volved "any compromise of principle or any ad- 
vantage of freedom," yet he would "meet prejudice 
with conciliation, exaction with concession which 
surrenders no principle, and violence with the 
right hand of peace." He suggested in the Senate 
the propositions he had already offered in the com- 
mittee of thirteen, and urged the immediate admis- 
sion of Kansas, as settling all that was vital or 
even important as to the question of slavery in the 
Territories. 

In a second speech a few weeks later he further 
explained his position upon this question. The 
Territories of the United States, he said, contained 
more than a million square miles, over which a 
slave code had been in force for twelve years ; but 
though during this time the courts, the legislature, 
and the administration had maintained and guar- 
anteed slavery there, yet only twenty -four African 
slaves were to be found in that whole region, one 
slave for every forty -four thousand square miles. 
He had, therefore, no further fears as to this great 
public domain. Slavery there had ceased to be a 
practical question. 

Afterwards, during this same session, when Colo- 
rado, Dakota, and Nevada were carved out of this 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 221 

vast country, the acts organizing them as terri- 
tories, which were reported by a senator from 
Missouri, a strong supporter of the Breckenridge 
Democracy, and which contained no prohibition 
of slavery, received the votes of such stalwart anti- 
slavery men as Sumner, Wade, and Chandler of 
the Senate, and Thaddeus Stevens, Owen Lovejoy, 
and the radical Republicans in the House; no one 
of whom thought it worth while to explain or jus- 
tify the omission of the proviso prohibiting slavery, 
which they had so long and hotly contended was 
of vital importance. 

It was said on the one hand that Seward in 
these speeches had "surrendered his principles and 
those of his party to avert civil war and the disso- 
lution of the Union;" on the other hand he was 
denounced because he would "give up nothing at 
all, not even his prejudices or caprices, to save 
peace and the Union, the most inestimable of all 
blessings;" whilst there were others who thanked 
him for his attempt to save the Union, "without 
damage to the sacred cause of freedom, and the 
safeguard of its laws." 

He himself considered the "concessions" in his 
speech "not compromises but explanations." And 
as they were substantially only assurances that he 
was prepared to abide by the Constitution as it 
was and would not seek to amend or alter it except 
by a convention duly called for that purpose, his 
own conclusion may be fairly accepted as correct. 

To the charge that he had made a Union speech 



222 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

and not an anti -slavery one, Seward replied: 
"Twelve years ago freedom was in danger, and 
the Union was not. I spoke then so singly for 
freedom, that short-sighted men inferred that I 
was disloyal to the Union. . . . To-day, practi- 
cally, freedom is not in danger; and Union is. 
With the loss of Union all would be lost. Now, 
therefore, I speak singly for Union, striving if 
possible to save it peaceably ; if not possible, then 
to cast the responsibility upon the party of slavery. 
For this singleness of speech I am now suspected 
of infidelity to freedom. In this case, as in the 
other, I refer myself not to the men of my time, 
but to the judgment of history." 

Perhaps the clearest insight into Seward's hopes 
and expectations at this time is to be gained from 
a letter of Lord Lyons, the British minister at 
Washington, to Lord John Russell, then secretary 
of state for foreign affairs. "Mr. Seward's real 
view of the state of the country," he writes, "ap- 
pears to be, that if bloodshed can be avoided until 
the new government is installed, the seceding States 
will in no long time return to the confederation. 
He seems to think, that in a few months the evils 
and hardships produced by secession will become 
intolerably grievous to the Southern States; that 
they will become completely reassured as to the 
intentions of the administration, and the conserva- 
tive element which is now kept under the surface 
by the violent pressure of the secessionists will 
emerge with irresistible force. From all these 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 223 

causes he confidently expects that, when elections 
for the state legislatures are held in November 
next, the Union party will have a clear majority, 
and will bring the seceding States back into the 
confederation. He then hopes to place himself at 
the head of a strong Union party having extensive 
ramifications both North and South, and to make 
' Union or Disunion,' not ' Freedom or Slavery,' 
the watchword of political parties." 

Seward himself had expressed something of the 
same thought in the closing passages of his speech 
at the dinner of the New England Society in New 
York on the 22d of December, just after he had 
learned from Weed Mr. Lincoln's views, the con- 
cessions he was willing to make, and his tone 
toward the South. He said: "The necessities 
which created this Union are stronger to-day than 
they were when the Union was cemented; these 
necessities are as enduring as the passions of men 
are short lived and effervescent. The cause of 
secession was as strong on the night of Novem- 
ber 6, when a president and vice-president were 
elected who were unacceptable to the slave States, 
as it has been at any time. Fifty days have 
passed ; and I believe that every day the sun has 
set since that time, it has set upon moUiJied pas- 
sions and prejudices ; and if you loill only await 
the time, sixty more suns will shed a light and 
illuminate a more cheerful atmosphere" 

Taken in its connection, the meaning of the pas- 
sage in italics is obvious. Sixty days more will 



224 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

see the inauguration of a new president, whose 
administration will dispel doubts, clear the air, 
purge the government of secessionists and conspira- 
tors, and cheer the heart of every loyal lover of 
the Union. But, wrested from their context, these 
words were tortured into a prophecy that the war 
of secession would be at an end in sixty days, and 
were constantly quoted to show how false a pro- 
phet, how blind to the signs of the times, and how 
untrustworthy a guide Seward was. Even if this 
had been their real meaning, he would not have 
been alone at that time in his opinion that the 
war, if it came, would be a short one. An ob- 
server equally intelligent, with equal, if not su- 
perior, opportunities of seeing and knowing the 
actual condition of the South and Southern opin- 
ion. General Grant himself, has left on record a 
statement that during the winter of 1860-61, and 
indeed until after the battle of Shiloh, he believed 
that the war would be over in ninety days.^ 

It was not Seward's natural optimism which led 
him and many others with him to the belief that 
the advent of Lincoln's administration would bring 
a brighter outlook for the Union. Secession was 
as yet confined to the cotton and Gulf States. It 
was believed that, unless joined by others, these 
States alone had not the power to break up the 
Union. In the other slave States there were 
marked indications of a strong Union feeling ; in 
several, a distinct Union majority. At the North 
^ Grant's Autobiography, i. p. 222. ■' 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61 225 

the hope was very generally entertained that Lin- 
coln's inaugural and the whole tone of his ad- 
ministration would allay the passions and calm 
the fears of the people of those slave States that 
had not passed secession ordinances, and that they 
would remain loyal. But those who had this hope 
did not reckon upon the strength of the family 
affections and the wide ramifications of family ties 
among the dominant class in the slaveholding 
States. They overlooked the natural effect of the 
slaveholders' loyalty to one another, of their strong 
sectional sympathies, and of their fidelity to their 
supposed common interest in slavery. They for- 
got the Southerners' dislike to the North, the feel- 
ing they had that they were looked down upon as 
slaveholders, were treated as inferior in civiliza- 
tion and humanity, and the belief, common in the 
slave States, that Northern intermeddling with 
their domestic institutions was the cause of all 
their difficulties. Nor did those people who were 
still hopeful of the Union in any way anticipate 
the expedients to which the secessionist leaders 
would resort to drag any doubting State into dis- 
union, or to stifle the voice of the majority when 
they feared it was against them. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE CABINET — FORT SUMTER 

During the winter Mr. Lincoln had endeavored 
without success to select some Southern man as a 
member of his cabinet. When he reached Wash- 
ington on the 23d of February, there was still one 
place which was supposed to be open; and, in the 
scramble and intriguing for this, there was a 
moment when it seemed as if Seward would 
withdraw. The President's decision to nominate 
Montgomery Blair for this post was no suri:)rise to 
Seward. The statements of Weed on returning 
from Springfield in December had quite prepared 
him for this as well as for all the other cabinet 
appointments. He had no personal objections to 
Mr. Blair, and no reluctance to serve with him as 
a colleague. The selection, however, gave great 
offense not only to the leading Whigs, the most 
numerous body of Lincoln's supporters, since it 
left them a minority of the cabinet ministers; but 
also to many Republicans of Democratic antece- 
dents, who, while recognizing the ability of the 
Blairs, both disliked and distrusted them. It was 
also especially objectionable, for the reasons al- 
ready given, to the Union men of Maryland, by 



THE CABINET 227 

whom Mr. Blair was not recognized as a Mary- 
lander, and of whom, as they were substantially 
of old Whig stock and descent, Mr. Blair, as a 
Democrat and a stranger, was in no sense a re- 
presentative. Under these circumstances, Blair's 
friends were naturally uneasy, lest the President 
should for some reason change his mind before the 
nomination was actually made; and, when rumors 
of such a change were flying about Washington 
three or four days before the inauguration, one of 
these gentlemen, a personal friend of the Presi- 
dent, asked him if they were true. Mr. Lincoln 
answered, "No, — if that slate is broken again, it 
will be at the top." This was where Seward's 
name stood. 

There can be but little doubt that this speech of 
the President was at once reported to Seward, and 
that it had much to do with the abrupt manner in 
which on the 2d of March he wrote to Mr. Lin- 
coln, thanking him for his kindness and confi- 
dence, but declining the office of secretary of state. 
The other considerations inducing him to this 
course, and of which he speaks in his letter of 
March 8, presently to be quoted, may have been 
in his mind for some time; but they had not moved 
him to any definite action. Something of a differ- 
ent nature must have suddenly come to his know- 
ledge, which caused him within forty-eight hours 
before the inauguration to write to Mr. Lincoln, 
withdrawing his previous acceptance of the first 
place in the cabinet. His short note bears quite 



228 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

as strong marks of wounded feelings as of changed 
convictions. The coldness of its tone is in marked 
contrast with that of his other letters to the Presi- 
dent. 

Washington, March 2, 1861. 

My dear Sir : — Circumstances which have oc- 
curred since I expressed to you in December last 
my willingness to accept the office of secretary of 
state seem to me to render it my duty to ask leave 
to withdraw that consent. 

Tendering to you my best wishes for the success 
of your administration, with my sincere and grate- 
ful acknowledgments of all your acts of kindness 
and confidence towards me, I remain very respect- 
fully and sincerely, 

Your obedient servant, 

William H. Seward. 

The Hon. Abraham Lincoln, President-elect. 

Lincoln got this note on Saturday, and on Mon- 
day, inauguration day, handed his answer to his 
secretary, saying that he "could not afford to let 
Seward take the first trick." This mode of speech, 
with which the country afterwards became famil- 
iar, seemed at the time more undignified and of- 
fensive than pithy and expressive ; and many per- 
sons found it, in the President of the United 
States, as unpleasant as it was novel. As Seward 
did not persist in his refusal, one may be quite sure 
that the discreet secretary did not repeat to him 
the remark with which the President accompanied 



THE CABINET 229 

the delivery of the note. Seward was not con- 
sidering the administration as a game in which he 
was trying to take the first or any other trick ; 
nor did he wish his name on a slate which the 
President had any inclination to break; he was 
not so hungry for place that he would submit to 
any indignities, if he might thereby enjoy either 
the honors or emoluments of office; he was under 
no obligations to Lincoln to accept any appoint- 
ment. The obligation, if there were any, was the 
other way: Lincoln had taken from Seward the 
first trick at Chicago, and Seward had done his 
best to enable him to win the game in the country. 
He went into the cabinet from no motive less noble 
than the desire to perform for his country the best 
public service he could. He might not unreason- 
ably have hesitated about becoming a member of 
an administration composed of such discordant 
and heterogeneous materials as Mr. Lincoln had 
got together, — a cabinet which the caustic tongue 
of a veteran Republican described as "an assort- 
ment of rivals whom he had appointed out of cour- 
tesy [Seward, Chase, and Cameron], one stump 
speaker from Indiana [Caleb Smith], and two re- 
presentatives of the Blair family [Mr. Bates, for 
whom General Frank Blair was said to be respon- 
sible, and Montgomery Blair]." 

After the inauguration Lincoln had a long talk 
with Seward, who at last agreed to take office, 
and on the following day was nominated and con- 
firmed as secretary of state. 



230 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

In writing home at tliis time (March 8, 1861), 
Seward says: "The President is determined that 
he will have a compound cabinet; and that it shall 
be peaceful, and even permanent. I was at one 
time on the point of refusing — nay, I did refuse 
— to hazard myself in the experiment. But a dis- 
tracted country appeared before me, and I with- 
drew from that position." 

The cabinet, as finally constituted, consisted of 
Chase, Welles, Cameron, and Blair, Democrats; 
Seward, Bates, and Smith, Whigs. Some of 
these have already been spoken of, and of others 
there is no occasion to speak. The attorney -gen- 
eral, Edward Bates of Missouri, was known as a 
gentleman of spotless reputation, as an old conser- 
vative Whig of distinct anti-slavery opinions in a 
State where the holding of such views was as cour- 
ageous as it was rare, as a man who avoided 
rather than sought office, and as a respectable 
rather than an eminent lawyer. Mr. Welles was 
a Democrat from Connecticut. If he had any po- 
sition or prominence in his party, it was practi- 
cally confined to his own State ; he was not known 
throughout New England, of which section he was 
the representative in the cabinet. He had been 
a newspaper editor, and held a facile pen, had 
been in one of the departments at Washington, 
and postmaster at Hartford; but he brought to 
the cabinet neither increased strength within, nor 
additional support from without. The vigorous 
and successful administration of the navy during 



THE CABINET 231 

the war was substantially due to the energy and 
executive ability of Captain G. V. Fox, the assist- 
ant secretary in that department. 

Lincoln, in entering upon the duties of his 
office, was confronted by problems as appalling 
and perplexing as any government was ever called 
upon to face. The seven States which had under- 
taken to secede and break up the Union had 
formed their new Confederacy. In the month 
before Lincoln's inauguration they had elected a 
president, and adopted a constitution, whose fun- 
damental difference from that of the United States 
was in its provision for the most "ample and 
avowed protection to property in slaves." Their 
government was complete on paper ; the machinery 
of their state governments was the same as before 
the secession ordinances were passed, was in the 
hands of the same officers, and running on with- 
out change. They had banished the sovereignty 
of the United States from all places within their 
jurisdiction, except Forts Sumter and Pickens; 
the safety of which, insufficiently garrisoned and 
provisioned as they were, must be at once pro- 
vided for by the administration, unless they were 
to be abandoned. 

On the morning after the inauguration, before 
any member of the cabinet had assumed the duties 
of office, the War Department communicated to 
the President information just received from Major 
Anderson at Sumter, stating that he had only 
a month's provisions, that newly erected hostile 



232 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

batteries commanded his position, that the chan- 
nels and harbor had been obstructed, that patrol 
boats and other Confederate vessels guarded the 
approaches to his post and watched his every 
movement ; and that it would take twenty thousand 
men to relieve and hold the fort. General Scott 
and the other army officers confirmed this opinion. 
The relief of Fort Pickens was a much simpler 
affair, if it were only done promptly. But an ex- 
pedition for Sumter on the scale which these offi- 
cers thought requisite to insure success was simply 
impossible. The President had at his disposal no 
forces adequate for such an undertaking. A vague 
direction to General Scott by word of mouth, that 
he was "to exercise all possible vigilance for the 
maintenance of all military posts, and to call upon 
the departments for the means necessary for this 
purpose," and a request to him to reconsider care- 
fully the matter of the relief of Sumter, were all 
that could be done for the moment. Four days 
later the whole matter was laid before the cabinet, 
and on several days following there were consulta- 
tions with officers of the navy as well as of the 
army. The latter adhered to their opinion as to 
the force required to succor and hold Sumter; the 
former thought that a small expedition of light- 
draft steamers might successfully carry supplies. 
The President hesitated. He took from General 
Scott an order for the evacuation of the fort, but 
did not sign it; and on the 15th of March he 
called upon the members of his cabinet to give 



FORT SUMTER 233 

him in writing their opinions, whether, if it were 
possible to provision Sumter, it would be wise to 
attempt to do so. The form of the question shows 
that it was the political, not the military, problem 
which was submitted to their consideration. 

Only two members of the cabinet, Chase and 
Blair, favored the attempt to provision the fort, 
assuming it to be possible to do so. The other 
five, Seward, Bates, Cameron, "Welles, and Smith, 
were opposed to it. Seward in his answer assumed 
that "the government was to maintain, preserve, 
and defend the Union, peacefully, if it could, for- 
cibly, if it must, to every extremity." It was by 
our standing on the defensive, he thought, that 
the border States had so far been kept loyal, and 
a perseverance in this policy was in his opinion 
the only means of assuring their continuing so. 
He expressed his fear that with a daily press, daily 
mails, and incessant telegraph, the design to sup- 
ply the fort would become known in Charleston as 
soon as preparations should begin, and the garri- 
son fall by assault before the expedition could 
reach the harbor. 

To obtain more certain and definite information 
both as to the condition of Sumter and the exist- 
ence of any Union feeling in South Carolina, the 
President dispatched to Charleston Captain Fox, 
the author of the relief plan proposed by the navy, 
and two other gentlemen. Returning before the 
end of the month they reported that there was but 
one avowed Union man in Charleston: and while 



234 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

Captain Fox was more confident than ever of the 
success of his plan, he had been unable to con- 
vince either his companion, who visited the fort, 
or Major Anderson, that it was in any way a feasi- 
ble one. 

Just after their return Lincoln received from 
General Scott a memorandum, advising the aban- 
donment of Fort Pickens, as a measure of concilia- 
tion which would soothe the eight remaining slave 
States, and render perpetual their cordial adher- 
ence to the Union. A cabinet meeting was called, 
and with this memorandum and all the other infor- 
mation before them, the members of the cabinet 
gave the President their written opinions as to 
both forts. Of the seven members of the cabinet 
who, a fortnight before, had answered his question 
as to Sumter, Blair had been then the only advo- 
cate of that plan for its relief of which his brother- 
in-law. Captain Fox, was the author; though Chase 
had doubtfully answered that the fort should be 
relieved if possible. But now, when the situation 
of both forts was considered (only six members of 
the cabinet being present), Chase and Welles 
joined with Blair; Bates thought Sumter should 
be "either provisioned or evacuated," and they 
all, except Blair, were of opinion that Pickens 
should be reinforced. Having heard the views 
of his constitutional advisers, the President deter- 
mined to attempt the relief of Sumter; and, as he 
was uneasy at the want of news from Fort Pickens, 
for the reinforcement of which he had already 



FORT SUMTER 236 

taken specific measures, he resolved to send an 
expedition there also. The preparations for the 
Sumter expedition, which were made through the 
Navy Department and followed its usual routine, 
were more or less guessed at by the public and dis- 
closed in the newspapers. Notice of this expedi- 
tion was officially communicated to the governor 
of South Carolina in accordance with an assurance 
the President had previously authorized to be 
given, that he would give such information, if it 
should be decided to provision the fort. But be- 
fore this notice reached Charleston, two telegrams 
had already made the plan known and its precise 
details had been ascertained by the treacherous 
rifling of Major Anderson's mail bags. The bom- 
bardment began before the first vessel of the relief 
expedition had reached the rendezvous off Charles- 
ton harbor; a violent storm prevented the arrival 
of the tugs which were essential to success, and the 
expedition was a failure. 

Seward has been criticised for detaching and 
sending to Fort Pickens the Powhatan, which the 
secretary of the navy had ordered on the Sumter 
expedition. But Seward's responsibility in the 
matter, if any at all, is very slight. Captain Fox 
asked for the Pocahontas for Sumter, and the 
President ordered her to be given him. Mr. 
Welles substituted the Powhatan. The President, 
knowing nothing of this change, gave to the officer 
in charge of the Pickens expedition a direct order 
for the Powhatan, and he carried her off. The 



236 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

loss of this vessel did not in fact have anything to 
do with the failure of the Sumter expedition, the 
causes of which have been already stated. ^ 

The Fort Pickens expedition succeeded, and 
gave us during the war the control of that fort, 
of Key West, and of the Dry Tortugas. This ex- 
pedition was fitted out under the direct orders of 
the President without the knowledge of the Navy 
Department, and the secret was kept so perfectly 
that the first actual knowledge of it was derived 
from the report of the commander on his return. 
This mode of proceeding was, of course, all wrong 
and irregular, but secrecy was vital to success, 
and it may well be doubted whether in the then 
existing condition of affairs secrecy would have 
been possible had the Navy Department directed 
or even been cognizant of the preparations. 

The Sumter expedition failed of its ostensible 
object, but it brought about the Southern attack 
on that fort. The first gun fired there effectually 
cleared the air, put an end to discussions and dif- 
ferences of opinion, and placed Lincoln at the 
head of a united people, resolved, at whatever cost, 
to maintain the integrity of their country. There 
were no more doubts or hesitations. The border 
States chose their sides. The struggle had begun. 

^ The President's orders to Fox were, " If on your arrival at 
Charleston you shall ascertain that Fort Sumter shall have been 
attacked by an opposing force you will return here forthwith." 
The Baltic, with Fox on board, the first vessel to reach the ren- 
dezvous off Charleston, arrived there just in time to hear the 
opening giins of the bombardment. N. ^- H., iv. pp. 35, 54. 



CHAPTER XIV 

JUSTICE CAMPBELL AND THE REBEL COMMIS- 
SIONERS 

At the time of Lincoln's inauguration there 
were in Washington commissioners accredited by 
the "Confederate States of America" to the gov- 
ernment of the United States as a foreign power, 
and instructed to open negotiations "with a view 
to the recognition of the independence of the Con- 
federacy and the conckiding of treaties of amity 
and good will between the two nations." So far 
as its avowed objects were concerned their mission 
was wholly fruitless. They never saw the Presi- 
dent or any member of his cabinet. They lin- 
gered in Washington for their own purposes, until 
on the 8th of April they took from the State De- 
partment a copy of a memorandum which Seward, 
unwilling to give them even such recognition as is 
implied by the writing of a letter, had filed there 
on the 15th of March, and which they knew had 
been waiting for them since that time. In this 
memorandum he distinctly but civilly declined to 
receive them, and gave some reasons for so doing. 
As they assumed to be foreign ambassadors, they 
should have addressed themselves in the first in- 



238 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

stance to the secretary of state ; but, feeling doubts 
as to their reception, they induced a senator from 
a border State that had not yet seceded, to ask if 
the secretary would see them informally; when 
Seward declined to do this, they sent a formal ap- 
plication, with the final result that has just been 
stated. This is the whole story of these commis- 
sioners, so far as the nominal and declared object 
of their appointment is concerned; but Southern 
historians have accused the government of having 
adopted "a policy of perfidy" toward them; and 
Justice John A. Campbell, of Alabama, — who 
still retained his place on the Supreme Court, 
although he was in fact the intermediary of the 
Southern commissioners and Confederate authori- 
ties, — has devoted much labor to an attempt to 
prove that Mr. Seward in his intercourse with him 
was guilty of duplicity and equivocation. 

Judge Campbell's intervention began in this 
way. When Seward had written the memoran- 
dum which has been spoken of, declining to re- 
ceive the commissioners, he directed a copy of it 
to be prepared and given them; but before this 
had been done two justices of the Supreme Court, 
Nelson of New York, an old acquaintance and al- 
most neighbor of Seward, and Campbell of Ala- 
bama called upon him together. Campbell, it is 
said, had his resignation already prepared and was 
to have sent it in on that very day (March 15, 
1861).^ Instead of doing this, however, he had 

^ Stanton to Buchanan, March 10, 1861. 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS 239 

determined to withhold it for a time, that, as he 
wrote Jefferson Davis, he might avail himself of 
his position to give him access to the administra- 
tion, which he could not otherwise have.^ He 
probably tliought the breaking up of the Union a 
mistake, and was therefore not a disunionist; but 
he was a states-rights Southern Democrat, who be- 
lieved that his State had a claim on him paramount 
to any obligation which he owed to the United 
States government, whose sworn officer he was. 
Alabama had seceded, and he meant to follow her. 
He also believed, however, that if the United 
States were to abandon Sumter and Pickens and 
let the Confederacy go its way unmolested, war 
might be avoided, and a more satisfactory conclu- 
sion of the questions between the two "govern- 
ments " be speedily reached. Seward knew no- 
thing of this. He only knew that Campbell was 
a justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States ; and if he had harbored any suspicions as to 
his loyalty, or had felt the need of any assurance 
of this beyond the guaranty of his official position, 
any such doubts would have been dispelled, and 
every requisite assurance given, by his coming as 
the companion of Judge Nelson, whose supjDort of 
the government was absolutely unquestioned. 

Seward, Nelson, and Campbell each wished to 

preserve the existing condition of things, and to 

postpone as long as possible any outbreak, in the 

hope that a resort to force might be at last avoided. 

1 April 3, 1861. 



240 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

Their reasons for wishing so and the objects they 
had in view were, however, quite different. Sew- 
ard's position and hopes were well known. He 
thought that, if any clash of arms could be post- 
poned until the border States should realize the 
scrupulous care with which Lincoln would respect 
and maintain the just rights of the South, they 
would remain loyal, and that secession, confined 
to the seaboard and Gulf States, would fail from 
its own weakness. Nelson dreaded a war, had 
grave doubts as to the legality of some coercive 
measures which it was rumored that the govern- 
ment might adopt, and feared that, should there 
be a resort to arms, our constitutional government 
might perish in the struggle. As to Campbell's 
position, perhaps enough has been already said. 
He considered the Confederacy an established fact ; 
but he knew that peace was very important for 
the new government, and he was willing to work 
for it in the interests and as the intermediary of 
Jefferson Davis and his cabinet.^ Whether Camp- 
bell had seen the commissioners before calling on 
Seward seems uncertain. His visit with Judge 
Nelson was made for the purpose of inducing Sew- 
ard to reconsider the matter, and to write to the 
commissioners, stating the desire of the govern- 
ment for a friendly adjustment, and saying that 
"every effort would be made and every forbearance 
exercised before resorting to extreme measures." 
This Seward declined to do, and told the judges 
1 Davis's Message, May 6, 1861. 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS 241 

that the cabinet would never assent to it. On 
Seward's part the conversation was frank and 
friendly; but, considering that Judge Campbell 
was a Southerner from a seceded State, it was 
unwise and indiscreet. That there was any differ- 
ence between Campbell's relations and feeling 
towards the government and those of Judge Nel- 
son, seems not to have occurred to Seward at the 
time; certainly no suspicion ever crossed his mind 
that Campbell was in fact a secessionist going out 
with his State, but lingering in Washington and 
keeping his place, that he might better serve the 
interests of the rebel authorities. 

It had already been announced half officially in 
the newspapers that Sumter was to be evacuated ; ^ 
and Campbell asked Seward point-blank if this 
was so. Campbell says that Seward replied that 
Sumter would be evacuated within five days. 
Leaving Seward, Campbell went at once to the 
rebel commissioners and reported to them the re- 
sult of his conversation. He urged them to give 
a reasonable delay before demanding an answer to 
their request for an interview, telling them that, 
if they pressed for it at once, they would receive 
a civil but firm refusal. As to Fort Sumter, he 
said he felt perfectly confident it would be evacu- 
ated within five days. The commissioners were 
not quite open with Campbell; he found them ap- 
parently impatient of delay; they seemed to yield 

^ New York Herald, March 10. National Republican, March 
12, 1861. 



242 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

to his wishes reluctantly, and only after they had 
satisfied themselves that all his information had 
come from Seward ; they required him to put his 
statement as to Sumter in writing and to sign it. 
Their reluctance, however, was more apparent than 
real. Their secret instructions were to "play with 
Seward and gain time," until the South was ready. 
They meant to make a peremptory demand for 
their reception or rejection on the very first day 
that Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were ready 
to meet the consequences ; but not till then, if they 
could avoid it. Campbell's intervention gave them 
just the excuse they desired. It enabled them to 
stay in Washington and pick up such crumbs of 
information and gossip as could be found in the 
corridors of the hotels or in other places accessible 
to them, and to secure time for the Confederacy to 
make the necessary arrangements for its defense. 
Their course was approved, and they were in- 
structed to make no formal demand for an answer 
so long as the United States continued its hesi- 
tating, uncertain, and vacillating policy. 

After seeing the commissioners, Campbell the 
same evening (March 15) wrote to Jefferson Davis : 
"Before this reaches you Sumter will have been 
evacuated, or orders will have been issued for the 
purpose." This he says that Seward authorized 
him to do ; he also says that he sent to Seward the 
same evening the substance of the memorandum 
which he had given to the commissioners. The 
memorandum and his statement as to that are to 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS 243 

be found in his letter to Seward of April 13, 
1861. Campbell's statement that Seward author- 
ized what he wrote to Davis was never made pub- 
lic until after Seward's death. 

The conversation, memorandum, and letter to 
Davis are all to be referred to the same day (March 
15), the very day of the decisive vote in the cabi- 
net (five to two) against holding Sumter; when 
Lincoln had already in his possession the order 
for its evacuation, which only needed his sig- 
nature. Seward, therefore, had not the slightest 
doubt that the matter was settled. He communi- 
cated to his visitors the confidence he himself felt. 
It was an unguarded statement on his part, yet 
not fairly subject to any severe criticism. What 
Judge Campbell stated, on the faith of what he 
heard from Seward, he might almost equally well 
have said upon the faith of what is admitted to 
have been the almost official utterance of the gov- 
ernment organ; his attempt to torture Seward's 
statement into a promise and to charge him with 
duplicity in not carrying it out wrests the words 
from their natural meaning and from the sense in 
which the judge understood them at the time. He 
knew perfectly well that it was not in Mr. Sew- 
ard's power to carry out any policy or to control 
the situation in any way; that all that he could 
do, and what he was doing, was to state the con- 
clusion, which he understood to have been reached 
at the time, but which at any moment before it 
was acted upon might be reversed, against his own 



244 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

judgment and contrary to his expectation, as in 
this case actually happened. Moreover, Judge 
Campbell seems to forget, — when he speaks of 
this statement as a promise, and charges Seward 
with bad faith in not fulfilling it, — that a promise 
necessarily implies two parties who are on opposite 
sides, and that in charging the secretary with bad 
faith he assumes not merely that he himself was, 
as afterwards appeared, a rebel emissary, but that 
he was then known as such to Mr. Seward ; whereas 
just the reverse is true. It had never occurred to 
the secretary that he might find under the robes 
of a United States judge an emissary of Jefferson 
Davis. The two judges who were present at this 
interview on the 15th of March seemed to have 
come on the same errand and were presumed to be 
in the same position. Mr. Seward's conversation 
was with both alike ; whatever he said was said to 
both; whatever assurances or promises he made 
were given to one just as much as to the other; if 
he was guilty of any bad faith, he was equally so 
to both judges. Judge Nelson approved Judge 
Campbell's memorandum which has been quoted, 
but we have yet to learn that he ever gave to 
Campbell's charges against Seward any counte- 
nance or indorsement. 

When five days had gone by, Campbell, whose 
true relations, if there were still any shadow of 
doubt about them, are thus made absolutely clear, 
requested the rebel commissioners to telegraph 
Beauregard at Charleston and ascertain what had 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS 245 

been done as to vacating Sumter. Beauregard 
answered tliat there had been no change; there- 
upon Judge Campbell, taking Judge Nelson with 
him, went twice to see Mr. Seward (March 21 and 
22) and on the same days wrote for the commis- 
sioners two memoranda giving the results of these 
interviews. In the first he says that his confidence 
in the evacuation of Sumter is unabated; in the 
last, that of March 22, he repeats this statement, 
and adds, ^^ I shall have knowledge of any change 
in the existing status.^^^ At this point Judge 
Nelson withdrew from further connection with the 
matter; he had probably begun to suspect Camp- 
bell's real relation to the Confederate authorities, 
and was afraid of being drawn into a false position 
by continuing to follow him further. Here it be- 
comes important as well as interesting to note the 
difference in Judge Campbell's language when he 
speaks of a promise actually made him, and that 
which he used in stating his own conclusions from 
what had been said in conversation. He does not 
say now that he is convinced he shall have know- 
ledge of any change; he asserts positively, "I 
shall have knowledge of any change in the existing 
status." This new mode of expression was not acci- 
dental; it corresponded to the new situation. He 

^ In his letter of April 13 to Mr. Seward Judge Campbell 
attempts to paraphrase this sentence so as to restrict it, and make 
it mean that as regards Fort Pickens he was to " have notice of 
any design to alter the existing status there." This is not so in 
the original memorandum, and this construction is not warranted 
by the context there. 



246 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

now for the first time had a promise, which Seward 
had been authorized by the President to make, and 
the difference in his phraseology only repeated the 
difference in Seward's. The President had been 
informed by Seward of his conversation with Nel- 
son and Campbell on the 15th of March. He had 
weighed the matter deliberately, and Seward's 
statement to Campbell on the 2 2d, that he should 
"have knowledge of any change in the existing 
status," embodied, as Mr. Lincoln's biographers 
teU us, the conclusion which the President himself 
had reached and which he had authorized Mr. 
Seward to communicate to Judge Campbell. 

The President was at this time deeply consider- 
ing his duty with reference to the whole situation 
and especially as to Sumter. He had said in his 
inaugural address: "The power confided to me 
will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the pro- 
perty and places belonging to the government." It 
might be true that it would require a force greater 
than he could command to hold Sumter against a 
hostile attack, and that to send any reinforcements 
thither might provoke an attack ; the garrison al- 
ready there was quite sufficient for a time of peace, 
but its provisions were nearly exhausted. Should 
he undertake to throw in fresh supplies by sea, 
following a plan which naval officers assui-ed him 
was practicable ; or should he, notwithstanding his 
public declarations, withdraw the troops, and evac- 
uate the fort without making a single effort to 
supply the needed provisions? 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS 247 

To determine this matter to his own satisfaction, 
the President felt that he must have further and 
more accurate information, and to obtain this he 
sent to Charleston three gentlemen on whose judg- 
ment he thought he could rely. One of them, 
Marshal Lamon, besides visiting the fort and see- 
ing Major Anderson, had an interview with Gov- 
ernor Pickens, in which he made such inquiries as 
to the best mode of removing the garrison, and 
whether they would be permitted to depart in 
peace, that the governor fancied the evacuation 
definitely determined on, and was constantly ex- 
pecting to see signs of preparation for it. Becom- 
ing impatient after a few days, he wrote to Beau- 
regard, whom the Confederate authorities had sent 
to command at Charleston : "If Lamon was author- 
ized to arrange matters, Anderson ought now to 
say so." Failing to learn anything through Beau- 
regard's inquiries, the governor, on the 30th of 
March, telegraphed to the Confederate commis- 
sioners at Washington. They sent at once for 
their intermediary, who carried the dispatch to 
Seward on Saturday afternoon and left it, saying 
that he would return on Monday. When they 
met on that day, Campbell, after some unimpor- 
tant talk, asked Seward what he might say to 
Governor Pickens on the subject of Sumter. Sew- 
ard wrote: "The President may desire to supply 
Port Sumter, but will not undertake to do so with- 
out first giving notice to Governor Pickens," and 
handed this to Campbell. According to a more 



248 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

detailed narrative of this interview given by Camp- 
bell (from whom, it should be observed, our only 
accounts of all these interviews come), Seward, in 
rej)ly to a further question, stated that he did not 
believe the attempt to throw in supplies would be 
made, and that there was no design to reinforce 
the fort. To which Campbell answered that he 
had that assurance previously, and added that it 
was already difficult to restrain South Carolina, 
and that he " would not recommend an answer that 
did not express the purpose of the government." 
Thereupon Seward went out, saying he must see 
the President; and returning presently, modified 
the memorandum so that it read, "I am satisfied 
the government will not undertake to supply Fort 
Sumter without giving notice to Governor Pick- 
ens." ^ With this, as the definitive reply to his 
inquiry as to what he "might say to Governor 
Pickens," Campbell departed; and the interviews 
between him and Seward were brought to an end. 
If there is any substantial difference between the 
two papers written by Seward at this time, it is, 
that the probability of an attempt to provision the 
fort is more strongly suggested by the second, 
which Campbell carried off, than by the first. A 
person comparing the two, and considering the 
change of phraseology, might naturally find the 
explanation of it in a more than half-formed, 
though not fully ripe purpose in the President, by 

1 CampbeU to Seward, April 13, 1861. Reb. Rec. I. Doc. p. 
426. 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS 249 

whom the alteration had evidently been made, to 
endeavor to supply the garrison of Sumter. 

The day before Campbell went to Seward with 
the telegram from Governor Pickens the cabinet 
had held its second meeting as to Sumter. At this 
meeting Chase, Welles, and Blair had given their 
opinions in favor of relieving the fort, by force if 
necessary, and Bates had stated his conclusion 
that the time had come either to evacuate or to 
relieve it, while Seward and Smith thought that 
it should be abandoned. The President had given 
no definite orders for an expedition to Sumter, 
though he had issued some preparatory directions, 
which were probably known only to the secretaries 
of war and of the navy, who were each necessarily 
cognizant of them. It is clear from his letter of 
April 1 to the President, which is presently to 
be spoken of, that Seward either did not know 
them, or had no belief that they would lead to any 
consequences. If there was any rumor of these 
preparations in Washington, it was not sufficient 
to excite serious uneasiness in the Confederate 
commissioners before the 6th of April, the day on 
which the President gave to Captain Fox his final 
orders for the Sumter expedition, and sent to 
Charleston a confidential messenger with the pro- 
mised notice to Governor Pickens of his intention 
to provision the fort. 

By the morning of Sunday, April 7, however, 
the commissioners had become so disturbed that 
they again invoked Campbell's assistance; he at 



250 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

once wrote to Seward and received from him this 
brief reply: "Faith as to Sumter fully kept; wait 
and see." This of course meant that notice had 
been given to the governor, as agreed, of the at- 
tempt to provision the fort, and that Campbell, if 
he would only wait, would see this. It is evident 
that Campbell at the time so understood it, for on 
the same day, after receiving this line from Sew- 
ard, he wrote the commissioners: "I believe that 
my assurances to you, that the government will 
not undertake to supply Sumter without notice 
to Governor Pickens, will be fully sustained by 
the event." A further extract from the draft of 
a letter written by him on the same day will show 
that, while he knew and shared the common opin- 
ion in Washington as to the uncertainties and 
vacillations of the administration, he also antici- 
pated what was to be its ultimate decision as to 
Sumter. He says: "Such government by blind- 
man's-buff, stumbling along too far, will end by 
the general overturn. Fort Sumter, I fear, is a 
case past arrangement." 

The same Sunday evening at nine o'clock the 
commissioners' secretary called at Seward's house 
to ask that the answer to their request for an in- 
terview, which they knew had been waiting their 
pleasure at the State Department for more than 
three weeks, might be delivered to them at two 
o'clock the next day. This was done. On the 
9th of April, they sent to Mr. Seward a reply, 
which had previously been submitted to Judge 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS 251 

Campbell and modified at his request, and on the 
11th they left Washington. They had gained the 
delay which they were instructed to obtain. If 
their hopes of a peaceful solution of their difficul- 
ties by the administration's abandonment of Sum- 
ter and Pickens seem to have been at times some- 
what too sanguine, and their communications to 
the Confederate authorities too rose-colored, yet 
their telegram of March 22 — "And, what is of 
infinite importance to us, notice will be given of 
any change in the existing status " — shows that 
they themselves were not over-confident of the ful- 
fillment of their own prophecies of evacuation and 
of peace. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet never 
put any faith in these. On the 1st of March the 
Confederate secretary of war wrote to Beauregard 
at Charleston: "Give but little credit to the ru- 
mors of an amicable adjustment. Do not slacken 
for a moment your energies; " and this represents 
the attitude and action of the authorities at Mont- 
gomery from that time forward. 

The news of the bombardment of Sumter reached 
Washington on the 12th of April; the next day 
Campbell addressed to Seward a letter complain- 
ing that the equivocating conduct of the adminis- 
tration was the proximate cause of this great ca- 
lamity. To this letter Seward properly made no 
reply. A week later Campbell inclosed a copy of 
it in another communication, in which he said that 
he insisted upon an explanation, adding that in 
case of refusal he should not hold himself debarred 



252 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

from placing these letters before such persons as 
were entitled to an explanation from him. This 
letter also remained unanswered. Shortly after- 
wards Campbell gave his own version of the matter 
to Stanton, who, after hearing Campbell's whole 
story, wrote to Buchanan that he did not believe 
any deceit or double dealing could be justly im- 
puted to Seward, that he had no doubt that Seward 
believed that Sumter would be evacuated, as he 
stated it would be ; but that the war party over- 
ruled him. With Judge Campbell's later state- 
ments, founded upon his recollections after the 
lapse of ten years, there is no need to concern 
ourselves ; so far as they conform to the contem- 
porary records they are unimportant, so far as 
they modify them they are less trustworthy. Nor 
is this the place to discuss what must be regarded 
as Judge Campbell's equivocal and unfortunate 
position in the whole affair. As an historical epi- 
sode, the incidents have but little importance, 
though they are not devoid of interest as the story 
of a single Southern intrigue; as the basis of a 
serious accusation against Seward they seem to 
justify this somewhat full statement of them. 

Seward's natural optimism and his earnest desire 
to avoid the "civil war, and the violent emancipa- 
tion " which he had long before prophesied as its 
inevitable consequence, may have made him over- 
confident that some peaceful settlement would be 
reached; he may have expressed this confidence 
too strongly to Judge Campbell, with whom, as 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS 253 

subsequent events showed, he talked more freely 
than was judicious, misled, as other people were, 
as to Judge Campbell's loyalty, by his retaining 
his seat in the Supreme Court of the United States 
notwithstanding the secession of Alabama, and by 
his selection of Judge Nelson of New York, a 
familiar acquaintance and almost neighbor of Sew- 
ard, as the companion of his visits. The only 
independent contemporary opinion as to Seward's 
conduct in these transactions is that of Mr. Stan- 
ton, who was then far more disposed to criticise 
the administration than to commend it, and to find 
fault with Seward than to excuse or justify him ; 
and who reached his conclusions solely from Judge 
Campbell's own story, told him while the whole 
matter and every detail of it was fresh and vivid 
in the judge's mind. Under these circumstances, 
it is no more than justice to Seward that these 
conclusions should be accepted as final, and that 
he should be relieved from any imputation of deceit 
or double dealing in the whole affair. 



CHAPTER XV 

LETTER OF APRIL 1 TO THE PRESIDENT — THE 
BLOCKADE 

Before the close of Seward's first month as 
secretary of state there was another incident which 
there is reason to believe has been misinterpreted, 
and has consequently subjected Seward to criti- 
cisms both harsh and unjust. 

On the 1st of April he submitted to Mr. Lin- 
coln a paper entitled "Some Thoughts for the 
President's Consideration," in which he stated that 
at the end of a month's administration we were 
"without a policy, either domestic or foreign." 
But, though he admitted this condition to have 
been unavoidable, the presence of the Senate and 
the pressure of the office-seekers having prevented 
attention to graver matters, any further delay to 
adopt and prosecute our policies for both domestic 
and foreign affairs would, he said, not only bring 
scandal uj^on the administration, but danger upon 
the country. 

As to domestic policy, he suggested that "we 
must change the question before the public from 
one upon slavery, or about slavery, for a question 
upon union or disunion." The occupation or evac- 



LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT 255 

uation of Fort Sumter being regarded as a slavery 
or party question, although it was not so in fact, 
he "would terminate it, as a safe means of chan- 
ging the issue; " and he deemed it "fortunate that 
the last administration created the necessity." 
He would reinforce and defend all the forts in the 
gulf, have the navy recalled from foreign stations 
to be prepared for a blockade, and put Key West 
under martial law. 

As to foreign nations, — he "would demand ex- 
planations from Spain and France categorically, 
at once; " and would convene Congress and de- 
clare war against them, if the explanations were 
unsatisfactory; he would also "seek explanations 
from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents 
into Canada, Mexico, and Central America to 
rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence 
on this continent against European intervention." 
"But," he added, "whatever policy we adopt, 
there must be an energetic prosecution of it. It 
must be somebody's business to pursue and direct 
it incessantly. Either the President must do it 
himself, and be all the while active in it, or de- 
volve it on some member of his cabinet. It is not 
in my especial province, but I neither seek to evade 
nor assume responsibility." 

This paper was first printed, eighteen years after 
Seward's death and a quarter of a century after 
that of Lincoln, by Nicolay and Hay.i Its exist- 
ence had been forgotten by those who had ever 
^ Abraham Lincoln, a History, iii. pp. 445-447. 



256 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

known of it, and it had apparently never been seen 
or spoken of from the day when Mr. Lincoln re- 
ceived and answered it, nearly thirty years before, 
until it fell into the hands of his biographers. 
Every one, therefore, knowing the close relation 
existing between them and Mr. Lincoln naturally 
accepted without question their account of the mat- 
ter and their comments upon it. This was done 
in the first edition of this book; the paper was 
treated as a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, — the 
secretary appearing to recommend to the Presi- 
dent that, in the midst of a civil convulsion which 
threatened the destruction of the republic, he 
should initiate a foreign policy which would ap- 
parently involve us at once in a war with at least 
three first-class European powers, and to suggest 
further that it would not be amiss, if the President 
had any hesitation about carrying out this scheme, 
that he should step aside and leave the secretary 
to manage the whole business. But since the pub- 
lication of that edition, it has been stated to me 
on unquestionable authority ^ that, when Seward 
wrote this paper, he knew not merely of the revo- 
lution in San Domingo, in which the Spanish flag 
had been hoisted, but also, — not from newspaper 
reports, but from members of the diplomatic body 
with whom he had personal and friendly relations 
— that France and Spain were actively discuss- 
ing schemes for invading Mexico and establishing 
a European protectorate there, also that Great 
1 Letter of F. W. Seward. 



LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT 257 

Britain and Russia had been sounded on this 
subject; that he thought the surest way to keep 
the peace with France and Spain, and to break up 
their plans before they were fairly committed to 
them, was to put on a bold front and insist on 
knowing at once their intentions, while we at the 
same time endeavored to rouse in the other Ameri- 
can republics and in Canada an active spirit of 
opposition to any interference by the Continental 
powers of Europe with the absolute independence 
of any country in America; that he believed that 
the manifestation in Canada of a strong public 
sentiment of this kind might have an almost deci- 
sive weight in determining the course of England, 
and would at all events greatly diminish the pro- 
bability of her acquiescing in any such schemes; 
that, if the republics of Central America could be 
made to see that a successful attack upon any one 
of them by a European power would be the pre- 
cursor of the downfall of all, they would be in- 
duced to unite for the repulse of the first invader, 
and that the apprehension of this union would tend 
to deter the European powers from attempting such 
conquests.^ 

From England and Eussia it will be observed 
that Seward proposed in his memorandum not to 
demand but to seek explanations; and this differ- 
ence of phraseology shows that he hoped that these 
explanations would be of a friendly and reassuring 
character. Happily for us the Mexican scheme 
1 Letter of F. W. Seward. 



258 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

was abandoned for the time, and there was there- 
fore no necessity for any further consideration of 
Seward's suggestions in this respect. It is cer- 
tain, however, that these were intended to work 
for peace and not for war, and to meet an emer- 
gency apparently threatening at the time, but 
which fortunately passed by; that the President 
understood the circumstances, and knew to what 
condition of affairs they were intended to apply 
and the results they were expected to secure. 

The paper was written by Seward himself, was 
copied that it might be legible, and was then laid 
before the President and left with him; it was 
a confidential memorandum written for Mr. Lin- 
coln's personal use, intended to aid, not to antag- 
onize him, and did not differ in character and 
purpose from other similar memoranda from all 
the members of the cabinet written to serve as 
reminders of views expressed in conversations or 
in cabinet meetings. 

Seward's suggestion of his readiness to assume 
further responsibilities, if called upon to do so, was 
simply a declaration of his readiness to be helpful 
in any way that he could, and was without any 
selfish or ambitious purpose on his part. It was 
intended to assist, not to embarrass, the President, 
and its importance and its sincerity were fully 
proved a few weeks later, when the administration 
began to realize that our self-preservation required 
some arbitrary proceedings by the government, — 
the arrest without legal authority of individuals 



LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT 259 

suspected of plotting its destruction, and a search 
for and seizure of the telegrams and correspondence 
of such persons. There was no warrant of law for 
such acts, and any officer who should assume the 
responsibility for them ran the risk of being com- 
pelled to pay heavy damages, as well as that of 
incurring public reprobation and odium. There- 
fore, while the necessity of such proceedings was 
fully recognized, every one shrank from tasks so 
troublesome and involving such unpleasant possi- 
bilities ; until Seward, finding that no one else in 
the cabinet was willing to undertake them, con- 
sented to do so. His conduct was recognized by 
the loyal citizens and by the government as emi- 
nently patriotic, a self-sacrifice on his part in aid 
of other overworked departments, and was cor- 
dially accepted as such by these departments. 

Those persons whose relations with Seward were 
most intimate, who enjoyed his entire confidence, 
who were in Washington at the time, and in daily 
and hourly communication with him, state as a 
matter of absolute certainty within their own know- 
ledge, that this is the true meaning, and all the 
meaning, that there is in the last two sentences of 
his paper; that Mr. Lincoln understood perfectly 
well that this was what was meant; and that the 
idea of asking the President to allow him or any 
one else to usurp the presidential functions and 
authority, and to rule in his stead, never entered 
Seward's mind.^ 

1 Letter of F. W. Seward. 



260 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

An apparent difficulty in accepting this expla- 
nation arises from the fact that, though all his 
suggestions as to a policy in which he was to take 
an active part were made with reference to our 
foreign affairs, which were precisely those of which 
he had charge, yet, in speaking of what he recom- 
mends and offers to do, he says, "It is not my 
especial province." It is natural, therefore, to ask 
what this statement means, unless his purposes of 
management extended to other departments than 
his own. The answer is obvious; the diplomatic 
correspondence was his province, but the sending 
of unaccredited agents to excite public opinion 
in Canada and the American republics — a plan 
like that which he afterwards effectively pursued, 
with Mr. Lincoln's approval, in England and 
France — was not his province, and required the 
previous authority of the President before he could 
move in it. There is really nothing, therefore, 
upon the face of the paper inconsistent with what 
the only persons now living who have a right to 
speak as to Seward's intent and meaning, knew at 
the time to be its purpose. So understood, it is in 
harmony with Seward's own declarations in a letter 
of somewhat later date to some political support- 
ers,^ and in accordance with all that we know 
of Seward's character, disposition, and conduct; 
while on the other hand, if this incident is to re- 
ceive the construction which Seward's critics first 
put upon it long years after his death, it stands 

^ Life, ii. pp. 50, 51. 



LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT 261 

quite apart from the rest of his life and in flagrant 
contradiction to it, is inconsistent with his own 
declarations, and is denied by the authoritative 
statements of those who are qualified to speak on 
his behalf. 

" The affair never reached the knowledge of any- 
other member of the cabinet, or even the most 
intimate of the President's friends."^ All that 
Mr. Lincoln ever said about it is to be found in 
his note to Mr. Seward written on the same day. 

Lincoln was a person exceptionally politic and 
shrewd, and, taking these qualities into account, it 
may be contended that his letter is not absolutely 
inconsistent with his understanding Seward's mem- 
orandum in the sense afterwards attributed to it 
by the critics; but at the same time it must be 
admitted that there is nothing in this letter incom- 
patible with his acceptance of the memorandum as 
meaning exactly what Seward intended it to mean. 
If either Mr. Lincoln believed the intent and 
meaning of the memorandum to be what his bio- 
graphers assume that it was; or if Seward had 
either so intended it, or had any suspicion that 
Mr. Lincoln so understood it, it seems quite im- 
possible that there should not have been some tem- 
porary embarrassment between the President and 
secretary, if not on Mr. Lincoln's, at least on 
Seward's side, — some interruption, however slight 
and momentary, in the harmony of their relations. 
But there was nothing of the sort; during these 
1 N. ^ E., iii. pp. 448, 449. 



262 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

very days Seward was engaged with the President 
in most confidential work entirely unconnected with 
his department; and all that is known goes to 
show that their relations were never for a single 
instant changed or even clouded, that Mr. Lin- 
coln's confidence in Seward's loyalty and upright- 
ness of purpose was never shaken in the slightest 
degree, that their mutual regard for one another 
grew steadily, and that their personal relations 
became continually more close, affectionate, and 
trustful until they were severed by death. 

To sum up all that is now known about this 
matter : On the one hand the precise and emphatic 
statements of those who speak with both knowledge 
and authority effectually dispose of the charge that 
Seward in his memorandum intended any disloy- 
alty whatsoever to his chief; while on the other 
hand Mr. Lincoln's uniform conduct towards his 
secretary both at the time and afterwards gives no 
indication that he ever misunderstood Seward's 
intentions, or questioned the good faith and recti- 
tude of purpose of " Some Thoughts for the Presi- 
dent's Consideration." 

Something has already been said of the condi- 
tion of our public service at the beginning of Lin- 
coln's administration. But it is quite impossible 
for any one not at that time in active life to realize 
the extent of the disintegration and demoralization 
which then prevailed in every department. The 
civil service contained many men who thought the 



LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT 263 

betrayal of their trusts no shame. The South 
found its most distinguished officers in deserters 
from our army and navy. Before the close of 
Buchanan's administration one of our generals had 
not only treacherously surrendered to the seces- 
sionists the public property of the United States 
confided to his charge, but had attempted to carry 
with him into the rebel service the troops under 
his command. Another officer, whose loyalty was 
not put to the test till later, received and trans- 
mitted the orders for the disposition of the troops 
when there were apprehensions of a night attack 
on Washington, and the same evening fled and 
joined the hostile forces. In the diplomatic and 
consular services there were men who, while hold- 
ing the commission of the United States, nego- 
tiated purchases of arms for the rebels, and others 
who assisted their cause by more indirect and less 
conspicuous means. Four, certainly, of Buchan- 
an's foreign ministers returned home only to accept 
commissions in the Southern army, and one of 
these had not even the common excuse of going 
with his State, for his State never seceded. In his 
instructions to Mr. Adams, written a day or two 
before the attack on Sumter, Seward gives a vivid 
and forcible picture of the situation : — 

"The party which was dominant in the federal 
government during the period of the last adminis- 
tration embraced practically and held in universal 
communion all disunionists and sympathizers. It 
held the executive administration. The secretaries 



264 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

of the treasury, war, and the interior were dis- 
unionists. The same party held a large majority 
in the Senate, and nearly equally divided the 
House of Representatives. Disaffection lurked, 
if it did not openly avow itself, in every depart- 
ment and in every bureau, in every regiment and 
in every ship of war, in the post office and in the 
custom house, and in every legation and consulate 
from London to Calcutta. Of four thousand four 
hundred and seventy officers in the public service, 
civil and military, two thousand one hundred and 
fifty-four were representatives of States where the 
revolutionary movement was openly advocated and 
urged, even if not actually organized." . . . The 
new administration "found the disunionists perse- 
veringly engaged in raising armies and laying 
sieges around national fortifications situate within 
the territory of the disaffected States. The fed- 
eral marine seemed to have been scattered every- 
where except where its presence was necessary, 
and such of the military forces as were not in the 
remote States and Territories were held back from 
activity by vague and mysterious armistices, which 
had been informally contracted by the late presi- 
dent or under his authority, with a view to post- 
pone conflict ... at least until the waning term 
of his administration should reach its appointed 
end. Commissioners . . . sent by the new con- 
federacy were already at the capital, demanding 
recognition of its sovereignty and a partition of 
the national property and domain. The treasury. 



THE BLOCKADE 265 

depleted by robbery and peculation, was ex- 
hausted, and the public credit was prostrate. 

"The period of four months, which intervened 
between the election which designated the head of 
the new administration and its advent, . . . as- 
sumed the character of an interregnum, in which 
not only were the powers of the government para- 
lyzed, but even its resources seemed to disappear 
and be forgotten." 

From the time when his secretary of state trans- 
mitted to our ministers abroad Buchanan's message 
of December, 1860, which contained the statement 
that in his opinion secession was a revolutionary, 
not a constitutional right, but that the federal 
government had no power to interfere with, re- 
strain, or coerce any State attempting to carry out 
this revolution, no general instructions as to their 
duties in the grave crisis through which we were 
passing were issued to our foreign ministers, until 
the 28th of February, 1861, less than a week be- 
fore Lincoln's inauguration. During this whole 
period the pernicious doctrines of this message, 
which gave to secession all the countenance and 
encouragement its friends could expect, were per- 
mitted to make their way unchecked throughout 
the various countries of Europe, encouraging their 
rulers in the belief that the ill contrived govern- 
mental machine, the United States, which its own 
president declared to be held together only by the 
mutual consent of its several parts, was fast falling 
to pieces, if indeed it were not already broken up. 



266 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

At length, after this long silence, but not until 
the very close of his official term, the Democratic 
secretary of state wrote to our representatives 
abroad a circular, in which, after reiterating 
Buchanan's declaration that there was no consti- 
tutional right of secession, and stating again the 
sectional character of the election and the conse- 
quent apprehensions of the defeated party, he in- 
structed our ministers that the President expected 
them to use such means as might in their judgment 
be necessary and proper to prevent the success of 
any attempts to secure from the European powers 
the recognition of the new confederation, declar- 
ing that such an acknowledgment by any Euro- 
pean government would tend to disturb the friendly 
relations existing between that country and our 
own. 

One of Seward's first acts on entering upon the 
duties of his office was to endeavor to reinforce 
the formal and perfunctory directions of this dis- 
patch, and to counteract its statement of the issues 
and results of the election, — a statement which 
seemed half to apologize for the conduct of the 
seceding States. For this purpose he wrote a cir- 
cular dispatch more bold and vigorous in tone, in 
which he inclosed Lincoln's inaugural address. 
In this circular he expressed his entire confidence 
in the maintenance of the Union, and strove to 
impress foreign powers with the conviction that its 
perpetuity was more for their advantage than its 
division into several distinct nationalities would 



THE BLOCKADE 267 

be; while lie also called upon our ministers to 
exercise the greatest possible diligence to prevent 
the designs of those who would invoke foreign 
intervention to embarrass or overthrow the re- 
public. 

To purge our diplomatic and consular service of 
all persons whose loyalty was uncertain was, how- 
ever, his most urgent duty; in many cases it was 
not enough that our representatives abroad should 
"speak only the language of truth and loyalty, 
and of confidence in our institutions and destiny," 
but it was of the utmost consequence that they 
should be persons selected with especial regard to 
their ability and fitness for the posts assigned 
them. It could hardly be expected that Lincoln, 
who not unnaturally considered our difiiculties as 
a domestic quarrel with which foreign nations had 
no concern, should be so keenly alive to the im- 
portance of these nominations as was Seward; but 
the President gradually brought himself to attach 
more weight to fitness than to pressure in his selec- 
tion from the candidates proposed, and was willing 
to accept the responsibility for several of them 
being "huddled up and coming from a small sec- 
tion of the country." There may have been dif- 
ferences of opinion between the President and sec- 
retary as to who would best fill some of the vacant 
places ; but the appointments were as a rule excep- 
tionally good, and the most important one, which 
we know from the President's own statement to 
have been made at Seward's pressing instance and 



268 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

on his responsibility, that of Mr. Adams to Eng- 
land, proved the wisest possible. 

With the actual outbreak of the rebellion, the 
mode of dealing with our Southern ports became a 
matter of the first importance, requiring an imme- 
diate decision. To leave them open to commerce, 
as they were, was out of the question. It would 
enable the seceding States, by the export and sale 
of their cotton, to raise money to sustain the in- 
surrection, and would allow the unrestricted im- 
portation of all sorts of arms, equipments, and 
munitions of war, as well as of such articles of 
daily use as those States did not themselves manu- 
facture. Two ways of closing these ports were 
suggested. One was their discontinuance as ports 
of entry, so that any vessel landing her cargo there 
would violate the laws of the United States. This 
course had the advantage of ease and simplicity. 
It required only a notice from the Executive that 
Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans, and 
the other Southern cities where there had been 
United States custom houses, were no longer ports 
of entry. It had this disadvantage, that if any 
vessel paid no heed to the notice, and ran in with 
her cargo, she had simply violated a revenue law, 
and could only be punished by proceedings in a 
federal court of the State and district where the 
offense was committed; and these courts were all 
in the hands of the insurgents. There were also 
well grounded apprehensions that other nations 
would consider the closing of the ports by procla- 



THE BLOCKADE 269 

mation an evasive attempt to establish a paper 
blockade, would certainly remonstrate against it, 
and would probably disregard it ; and that it would 
therefore be wholly ineffectual.^ The other method 
was an actual blockade. The advantages of this 
were, that, as it closed the ports by physical force, 
it must necessarily break up foreign commerce, 
and that any vessel violating it could be captured 
and condemned as prize in any admiralty court 
of the United States, or in that of any foreign 
country, with the assent of its government. The 
objections urged against it were, that a blockade 
was strictly an act of war, and that to proclaim it 
would either convert the insurgents into enemies 
and the domestic insurrection into a war; or that 
the blockade would be declared unlawful by the 
courts, and vessels violating it could not therefore 
be condemned; that no nation had ever attempted 
to establish so extensive a blockade, and that we 
had no naval force at all adequate for the purpose. 
Seward was earnest in advocating a blockade, 
and it has been said by one of his associates in the 
cabinet that he was principally responsible for the 
adoption of this alternative. The wisdom of this 
f^ourse was amply justified by the result. The 
legal objection was not sustained, the supreme 

1 These apprehensions were subsequently shown to be well 
founded. When Congress in the summer of 1861 passed a law 
authorizing the President to close the Southern ports by procla- 
mation, it was at once made a subject of remonstrance by both 
England and France, though nothing whatsoever had been done 
under it. 



270 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

court deciding that a blockade of their coast was 
a legitimate mode of dealing with insurgents. The 
practical difficulties proved to have been exagger- 
ated; the coast was extensive, but the important 
harbors were few. The validity of the blockade 
was never seriously questioned; and as it became 
continually more effective, it more and more crip- 
pled, and in the end practically destroyed, all for- 
eign commerce at the South, cutting off both their 
resources and supplies for carrying on the military 
operations of the rebellion. Of the two million 
four hundred thousand bales of cotton, the crop of 
1861, the largest part of which should have found 
its way across the Atlantic by the summer of 1862, 
only about fifty thousand bales ever reached Eu- 
rope ;i of these England received the lion's share. 
In December of that year (1862) one of the Con- 
federate cabinet ministers spoke of "the almost 
total cessation of foreign commerce for the last 
two years" as producing a "complete exhaustion 
of the supply of all articles of foreign growth and 
manufacture; " and this statement was confirmed 
by Lord Russell's almost simultaneous declaration, 
that " the United States were enabled by the block- 
ade to intercept and capture a great part of the 
warlike supplies which were destined to the Con- 
federate States from Great Britain." 

^ Bernard's Neutrality of Great Britain, pp. 286-87. 



CHAPTER XVI 

England's recognition of the confederates 
AS belligerents 

Before the breaking out of the rebellion the 
question of the probable attitude of the great Eu- 
ropean powers, in case of the government's resort 
to force to maintain the Union, had occasioned no 
uneasiness at the North. If there was any public 
opinion there on the matter, it was hardly more 
than a vague notion that we should be left to settle 
our own quarrel in our own way, the North, as 
representing the cause of freedom and of legitimate 
government, having the sympathy of civilized 
Europe, while the South would labor under the 
odium of having stirred up a rebellion solely for 
the purpose of perpetuating and extending African 
slavery. The tone of the foreign newspapers 
warranted this belief. In leading articles, which 
showed their writers to be familiar with our Con- 
stitution and the relations between the federal and 
state governments, any attempt to destroy the 
Union, whether by individuals or by States, was 
declared to be treason. 

The South was at the same time warned that a 
proposal to intervene in their behalf in a struggle 



272 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

against the Union would be scouted nowhere with 
more scorn and indignation than in those districts 
of England which would most benefit by free trade 
with the United States; that the dissolution of the 
Union, so far from being hailed as a profitable 
transaction, would be lamented; and that any pol- 
icy would miscarry, which assumed that England 
could be coaxed or bribed into a connivance at the 
extension of slavery. The English government 
was in the hands of the Liberals, — the party of 
reform, the authors and advocates of an extended 
suffrage, and of the emancipation of the slaves in 
the British West Indies. No important questions 
were open between this country and Great Britain, 
and the North assumed that, as it would in any 
event remain the United States of America, the 
friendly relations then existing would not be in- 
terrupted. The French emperor had been, it was 
thought, especially cordial in his expressions of 
good will to the United States at his New Year's 
diplomatic reception (January 1, 1861), and the 
French press had expressed its hopes for the safety 
of the great American republic and the gradual 
diminution of slavery. There was a prevailing 
notion that the French would feel a decided senti- 
ment of regret at the disintegration of that Union, 
which France had so largely aided to establish, 
and that the seceding States would meet at her 
hands nothing but discouragement. 

At the South, on the contrary, the confidence of 
the leaders in their speedy recognition as an inde- 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS 273 

pendent nation inspired them with a conviction of 
success, and encouraged them to hasten the work 
of secession. They argued that Cotton was King, 
and that the loss of their great staple would cause 
such distress and disaffection in the manufacturing 
districts of both England and France that the two 
governments would be forced to insist that any 
war which interfered with its production and free 
exportation should cease. They also relied on the 
cupidity of the European commercial world, to 
which they proposed to offer the bribe of free 
trade, while they would exclude the North from 
their markets as a punishment, if their peaceable 
secession should be opposed. 

The course of events in the winter and early 
spring of 1861 had a marked effect on European 
opinion. First came Buchanan's declaration that 
there was nowhere any power to prevent the with- 
drawal of any State from the Union. This was 
followed, during the remainder of his administra- 
tion, by an inaction which was broken only by an 
abortive attempt to reinforce Sumter, when the 
steamer carrying the troops was fired on by South 
Carolina militia. The federal government tamely 
submitted to the insult and made no further at- 
tempt to strengthen the garrison; in Congress 
nothing was done to prepare for the emergency 
of a forcible resistance to the federal authority, 
Northern statesmen and newspapers were earnestly 
advocating concessions and peace, and the people 
seemed to accept the situation with tranquillity. 



274 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

During the month after Lincobi's inauguration 
there were no signs of any more vigorous policy; 
the government was apparently still hesitating and 
drifting. On the other hand, the secessionists had 
been making steady and regular advances. The 
Southern States had formed a new confederacy, 
organized its government and elected its officers, 
had ousted the United States from all jurisdiction 
over its territory, and by the seizure of forts, arse- 
nals, custom houses, and mints, had turned against 
the federal government its own strongholds, arms, 
and resources. The Confederate soldiers were be- 
ing drilled, instructed, and commanded by officers 
who had abandoned the government that had 
trained and educated them; and the work of or- 
ganizing and administering the civil affairs of the 
Confederacy was in the hands of experienced pub- 
lic men, who had hardly ceased to hold office under 
the United States. 

The South was an oligarchy; the people were 
accustomed to follow their leaders, and were not so 
slugrffish and reluctant to move as were the masses 
of the free States. The South was roused and in 
earnest, the North still apathetic and inert. When 
Sumter was attacked, it was generally believed in 
Europe that the Union was at an end, that the 
South had practically secured its independence, 
and that the North would soon admit this. With 
most of the European governments the result was 
a matter of comparative indifference; but with 
England and France this was not so ; the prospect 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS 275 

that this great republic might break in pieces was 
soon followed by a wish that it would do so. The 
vast majority of the great governing classes in 
England thought that the division of the United 
States would be a fresh proof of the inability of 
a republican government to weather a storm, and 
would therefore give additional strength and sta- 
bility to their own institutions. Some of them, 
who had condemned African slavery as a foul blot 
upon this country, excused their support of the 
slaveholders' rebellion by insisting that the South 
was fighting for independence, the North for su- 
premacy. The mill owners and manufacturers of 
both countries were anxious lest a war between 
the sections should bring on a cotton famine and 
the distress which would accompany it; and the 
apprehension of this probably had the greatest 
effect in determining the attitude of France at the 
outset of the struggle. Perhaps the feeling preva- 
lent among the average Englishmen, that the 
Americans were a boastful and conceited people, 
and that it would do them no harm to have their 
pride taken down, — though it may not have shaped 
the government's policy, — had more effect than 
any other cause upon the tone and attitude of most 
of the English press, which changed from that of 
friendliness towards the North to bitter hostility 
and contemptuous sneers. 

Seward possessed a certain knowledge of Eu- 
rope; he had traveled there and met some of her 
leading statesmen; he had served several years 



276 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

on the Senate's Committee on Foreign Affairs, and 
knew the diplomatic relations between this country 
and the great European powers ; he was from the 
State of New York, had long been interested in 
the development of the commercial connections of 
its metropolis with foreign countries, and knew 
the extent and closeness of these connections with 
both England and France, and especially with the 
former. What complications might arise abroad, 
growing out of our difficulties at home, he could 
not foresee; but it was evident to him that the 
seceding States would make all possible efforts to 
obtain recognition as a nation, and were entirely 
confident of their speedy success. He thoroughly 
realized the necessity of our being represented 
abroad by our ablest and fittest men, especially in 
England, where he expected the Confederacy 
would make its first and most strenuous appeal, 
and would not cease to renew its efforts so long as 
a possibility of hope remained. 

Early in the spring Jefferson Davis had sent 
abroad commissioners to negotiate for the recogni- 
tion of the Confederacy; but their presence in 
England seemed to furnish no cause for anxiety, 
as we were still confident of the good will of both 
its government and people, and had moreover the 
assurance of Lord John Russell, the secretary of 
state for foreign affairs, that "the coming of Mr. 
Adams wovild doubtless be regarded as the appro- 
priate occasion for finally discussing and determin- 
ing the question " of the attitude to be taken by 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS 277 

Great Britain towards the rebellion. The Confed- 
erate agents baited their hooks judiciously, and 
had the audacity to tell Lord John that it was not 
any apprehensions as to slavery, but the protective 
tariff on which the North insisted, that had made 
it necessary for the Southern States to secede, 
since free trade was essential to their prosperity. 
It was not believed at the time in this country 
that this assertion could impose upon any one, or 
have any effect, unless its flagrant disregard of 
truth should excite a smile. No importance was 
attached to it, for neither our government nor our 
people were at all prepared to believe that Great 
Britain's policy towards us was to be that of a 
nation of shopkeepers, who would justify their 
course by saying that, though they objected to 
slavery, they wanted cotton, and disliked the Mor- 
rill tariff. 

Seward's first serious anxiety as to our foreign 
relations was caused by learning, through Russia, 
that the French emperor had proposed to Eng- 
land that they should act in concert in their course 
towards this country, and that England had as- 
sented; that Russia had been invited to join this 
league, and had declined; but that it was confi- 
dently expected that the smaller European powers, 
and those having less interest in the matter, would 
follow the lead of France and England. This 
intelligence showed him that our quarrel was not 
considered only our own affair ; that we were not to 
be permitted to settle it in our own way ; but were 



278 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

possibly to be threatened with a combined pres- 
sure from the European powers, which we could 
not resist, and which might ultimately force us to 
acquiesce in the breaking up of the Union. Upon 
learning this arrangement, Seward immediately 
took the only means in his power of averting 
the difficulty, by notifying our ministers that this 
government would not recognize any such under- 
standing between France and England, and would 
decline to receive any communications as joint 
proposals from these two, or any two or more coun- 
tries. He adhered to this resolve; and when, 
later in the year 1861, the British and French 
ministers called upon him together for the purpose 
of communicating their dispatches at a joint inter- 
view, he insisted on receiving them in separate in- 
terviews at different times, and on treating each 
dispatch as if it were a distinct matter, wholly 
unconnected with the other. 

The knowledge of the agreement between these 
two great powers had not at all prepared Seward 
for the first decided step taken by them together ; 
or it is perhaps more exact to say that the state- 
ment of Lord John Russell already quoted had 
given him absolute confidence that nothing would 
be done until Mr. Adams had arrived and had the 
opportunity of laying before the ministry the views 
of the new administration, with which he was fully 
in accord. The recognition of the rebels as belli- 
gerents, made after Mr. Adams was known to have 
sailed for England, and the publication, on the 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS 279 

very day of his landing, of the queen's proclama- 
tion enjoining her subjects to observe a strict neu- 
trality in the civil war then existing between the 
Northern and Southern States, seemed to Seward, 
in the moment selected for this action, when a few 
days' delay could have done no possible harm, a 
breach of good faith, an act of national discour- 
tesy and of personal disrespect to our minister. 
In substance, too, he thought the proceedino- of 
the British government unprecedented and unjus- 
tifiable, and under the influence of these feelings 
he wrote a fiery dispatch, which might have pro- 
duced a rupture between the two countries, had 
the paper been treated, according to the usages of 
diplomatic correspondence, as a message from one 
government to the other, and read in full to the 
British secretary of state. But when it was sub- 
mitted to the President, Mr. Lincoln, besides sug- 
gesting various modifications softening its tone, 
advised its being sent to Mr. Adams for his own 
guidance, not as a dispatch to be read, and that 
this should be distinctly stated in the letter itself. 
The wisdom of this was apparent; it was done, 
and Seward's original draft with these changes 
made by the President, and a few other unimpor- 
tant verbal alterations, conveyed to Mr. Adams, 
in language which did not admit of a doubt, the 
views of our government as to the course of the 
English ministry. 

Without undertaking to discuss elaborately how 
far the United States had just cause for a serious 



280 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

complaint against Great Britain on account of her 
recognition, on the 6th of May, 1861, of the Con- 
federacy as a belligerent, it may fairly be said 
that the action of that government was unprece- 
dented and precipitate, and could only be regarded 
by us as ungracious, if not intentionally offensive. 
As has already been stated, early in April Lord 
John Russell had suggested to Mr. Dallas, who 
was then our minister in London, that the coming 
of his successor, Mr. Adams, would be the suitable 
time for discussing any question between the two 
countries connected with the rebellion ; and again, 
on the 1st of May, referring to the rumors of a 
proposed blockade, he agreed that the time for 
discussion would be on the arrival of Mr. Adams, 
who was to sail on that day. Under these circum- 
stances the publication, on the very day of Mr. 
Adams's landing, of the queen's proclamation 
notifying her subjects of their duties and obliga- 
tions as neutrals in the civil war then raging in 
this country, whether it arose from an accidental 
forgetfulness, or an intentional disregard by Lord 
John of his conversations with Mr. Dallas and his 
assurances then given, was alike ungracious and 
offensive both to Mr. Adams and to the country 
he represented. It shut the door in his face, and 
precluded the discussions which Lord John had 
suggested ; it was obviously intended to do this. 

That Great Britain's recognition of the Confed- 
erates as belligerents was unprecedented is not to 
be denied. One of the principal grounds on which 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS 281 

it was attempted to justify this recognition was, 
that an insurrection of so many provinces, with 
organized governments, and a central confederate 
administration and army in existence at the outset, 
had been hitherto unknown. Mr. Adams, reply- 
ing to this contention, reminded Lord EusseU that 
there had been within a century a revolt of thir- 
teen provinces corresponding in every particular, 
except that of the numbers involved, to Lord Rus- 
sell's description; but that, notwithstanding all 
these points of identity. Great Britain had not 
been met at the outset in 1774 with the announce- 
ment by any foreign power of a necessity for the 
immediate recognition as belligerents of her insur- 
gent American colonies ; and he added that there 
was not the smallest ground for believing that 
Great Britain would have tolerated for one mo- 
ment any such proceeding, if it had been at- 
tempted. The only historical precedent, to which 
Lord Russell ever referred as a vindication of his 
course, was that of the recognition of the Greeks 
as belligerents in 1825, after they had maintained 
during four years the struggle for independence; 
yet, when, after this lapse of time, such recogni- 
tion was granted them, the Turkish government 
complained of it, — but Great Britain answered 
that a people who, in a contest of arms, had already 
covered the sea with their cruisers, must either be 
acknowledged as belligerents or treated as pirates, 
and that this latter character England disclaimed 
for Greece. It is obvious that this so-called pre- 



282 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

cedent bears no analogy to the case of the South- 
erners in May, 1861. The cruisers of Greece had 
scoured the Mediterranean and forced the English 
government to take a decided stand for the pro- 
tection of Great Britain's commerce and merchant- 
men. The Confederates in May, 1861, had done 
no harm at sea, were then utterly incapable of do- 
ing any such harm, and, if left to themselves, with- 
out the aid of British intervention and British 
ships, would have remained, until the insurrection 
was crushed, as powerless at sea as when Great 
Britain first created them maritime belligerents. 

It is equally clear that the action of the British 
government was precipitate. Though France and 
England had determined to act in concert, France 
made no proclamation, no public declaration of 
any kind, till a month later. It is hardly credible 
that Lord John Russell, when he was agreeing 
with Mr. Dallas on Wednesday that the arrival 
of Mr. Adams a fortnight later would be the ap- 
propriate time to discuss the questions of policy as 
to the Southern Confederates, should have been 
at the same moment seriously considering the pro- 
priety of at once recognizing them as belligerents. 
Yet he did so recognize them publicly and offi- 
cially, on the following Monday, in a speech in 
Parliament, and in dispatches to the British min- 
ister at Paris, as well as to Lord Lyons, in both 
of which he speaks of the late Union. The only 
reason he assigned in his speech or in either of his 
letters for this recognition was, that the Southern 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS 283 

insurgents had established a government which 
was carrying on in regular form the administration 
of civil affairs. But this is an explanation which 
does not explain the British ministry's haste. 
The organization of the Confederacy took place 
before the end of February. It was no new fact; 
it had been known in England for weeks. It was 
not, however, even in May absolutely true that 
the Southern Confederacy was performing all the 
functions of the federal government; for one of 
the most important of them, the carrying of the 
mails, was done by the United States throughout 
the entire South until the 1st of June. Between 
Wednesday, the 1st, and Monday, the 6th of May, 
nothing had happened, no new intelligence had 
been received, which could either justify or ac- 
count for the ministry's sudden change of front. 
Yet on that day the Southerners, who up to that 
time had been insurgents, became belligerents, 
and the fact of their recognition as such was 
announced in Parliament. The queen's procla- 
mation, a week later, was merely a domestic publi- 
cation, cautioning British citizens to govern them- 
selves accordingly. The ministry had, on the 1st 
of May, all the knowledge as to the proposed 
blockade of the Southern ports by the United 
States, and the issuing of letters of marque by 
Jefferson Davis, which they possessed on the 6th. ^ 

^ See Lord John Russell's letter of May 1st to the Commis- 
sioners of the Admiralty. Correspondence concerning Claims 
against Great Britain, i. p. 33. 



284 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

They had not at either date any official or authen- 
tic information as to these matters, and they did 
not at the time refer to either of them as a reason 
for their conduct. They knew that the proclama- 
tion as to each was merely a declaration of an in- 
tention to do something at a future day, official 
notice of which might justify a formal remon- 
strance, but would afford no excuse for any such 
hasty action; and it is a significant fact that the 
blockade was first officially mentioned as a reason 
for this sudden announcement of the existence of 
a civil war in America in the letters of Lord Rus- 
sell to Mr. Adams at and after the close of the 
rebellion in 1865. 

In its haste to recognize the Southerners as bel- 
ligerents the English ministry almost anticipated 
the Confederate Congress, whose act declaring 
the existence of a war between the United States 
and the Confederacy was first published on the 
same day on which Lord John Russell announced 
in the House of Commons that Great Britain con- 
sidered the Southern insurgents a belligerent power. 

In the four days between Lord John's interview 
with Mr. Dallas, which left our minister with the 
understanding that nothing was to be done until 
Mr. Adams arrived, and the government's decla- 
ration in Parliament, there was only one signifi- 
cant incident, — the unofficial meeting of Mr. 
Yancey and the other Southern commissioners 
with Lord John, at which they assured him that 
it was the heavy duties which the North had 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS 285 

forced the South to pay, and not the attacks upon 
slavery, that had driven their States to secession; 
that the new Confederacy had abolished the slave 
trade, was opposed to a high tariff, and wished 
only to sell its cotton to Europe and make its pur- 
chases there. This interview took place on Satur- 
day ; on Monday the letters to Lord Cowley and 
Lord Lyons were written, and it was announced 
in Parliament that the government had come to 
the conclusion that the Southern Confederacy must 
be treated as a belligerent. 

The real motives for this hasty action can only 
be conjectured. So far as the debates in Parlia- 
ment at this time throw any light on the matter, 
they indicate that, foreseeing that Englishmen 
would be likely to avail themselves of Jefferson 
Davis's offer of letters of marque, the British 
government determined to settle by anticipation 
the question of the character of such adventurers, 
and after consulting the law officers of the crown 
decided to recognize at once the Confederates as 
belligerents, in order to prevent any privateers- 
men who were British subjects being treated as 
pirates. This consideration, together with the 
prevailing idea — probably strengthened to a con- 
viction by the efforts of the rebel commissioners 
at their interview with Lord John Kussell — that 
the schism was complete, the Southern seceders 
already a perfect confederacy, and cotton sure to 
come more quickly, if there should be some act on 
the part of England which could be interpreted 



286 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

as the expression of a wish for, and a belief in, 
the speedy success of the South, may perhaps be 
fairly assumed as the leading motives for the, sud- 
den and decisive action which followed so closely 
the representations of the Southern agents. 

Seward's strong feeling as to the matter was 
not uncalled for or unnatural. He realized what 
British recognition meant, what courage and con- 
fidence it would give the seceders, how great an 
increase to their strength and resources; while he 
also knew that it would add incalculably to our 
difficulties and indefinitely prolong the struggle. 
His repeated remonstrances and unceasing endeav- 
ors to have this hasty step recalled were therefore 
no more than his duty, and, if ineffectual, were in 
no way unreasonable. 

Mr. Motley, who was on the spot and in a posi- 
tion to form an opinion about it, thought that, 
had this recognition been delayed only "a few 
weeks or even days," it would never have been 
made. Possibly he was right; but at all events 
we may moderate our natural resentment at this 
early unfriendliness of England by considering 
that our actual blockade a few weeks later would 
have justified, in point of law, though it would not 
have required, her declaration that the secession- 
ists were belligerents. In judging of her conduct 
at this time we should also bear in mind the natu- 
ral inclination of the citizens and government of 
a free country to sympathize with any people in 
rebellion, to assimie that they have good reason 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS 287 

for their insurrection, and are really striving to 
secure some right which is wrongfully withheld 
from them. Our own political history furnishes 
more than one instance of such sympathy on our 
part. And it is only fair to Great Britain to 
make some allowance for the influence which this 
feeling had in bringing about the hasty and impul- 
sive step of her government on the 6th of May. 
Its action can be called fortunate for us only in 
one aspect. It prolonged the struggle, and so 
brought about emancipation. Had the rebellion 
been crushed quickly, slavery, the cause of all our 
trouble, would have remained, and sooner or later 
the battle would have had to be fought over again. 



CHAPTER XVII 

NEGOTIATIONS AS TO THE TREATY OF PARIS — 
SUSPENSION OF THE HABEAS CORPUS 

By the articles of the Treaty of Paris, which 
was made at the close of the Crimean war in 
1856, the leading j)owers in Europe agreed — in 
order to mitigate the severities of maritime war- 
fare and assimilate its usages more nearly to those 
of war on land — that privateering should be 
abolished, and that both enemy's property, not 
contraband of war, on board a neutral vessel, and 
neutral property, not contraband of war, on an 
enemy's vessel, should be exempt from capture 
and condemnation as prize. They invited other 
countries to subscribe to these articles, with the 
hope of making them in this way rules which 
should govern naval warfare for the whole civilized 
world, stipulating, however, that every nation's 
assent must be given to them as a whole, or not 
at all. The United States, whose position was 
usually that of a neutral, wished to extend the 
exemptions from condemnation to all private pro- 
perty not contraband of war, and, postponing its 
assent to the treaty as it stood, opened negotia- 
tions for this purpose, which, though apparently 



THE TREATY OF PARIS 289 

fruitless, had not b6en abandoned at the close of 
Mr. Buchanan's administration. On the 24th of 
April, 1861, Seward instructed our ministers to 
England and France, as well as to other countries 
which had assented to these articles, to ascertain 
whether the governments to which they were sev- 
erally accredited were disposed to negotiate for 
the accession of the United States to this treaty, 
adding that the assent of these governments was 
to be expected, as we should accept the articles 
precisely in the form in which they had been pro- 
posed to us. These instructions were given before 
the British recognition of belligerency, and when 
there was no anticipation of any such action. 
France had not yet proposed to England the adop- 
tion of a common line of conduct towards this 
country in its difficulties ; and though a week be- 
fore (April 17, 1861) Jefferson Davis had pub- 
lished his offer of letters of marque to any one 
wishing to engage in privateering on behalf of the 
Confederate States, no such letters had been issued 
or applied for. 

Our negotiations seemed to open prosperously. 
They were delayed on various grounds ; but by the 
middle of July Mr. Adams was officially informed 
that the English ministry would advise the queen 
to conclude the necessary convention, so soon as 
they should be informed that a similar convention 
had been agreed on with the French emperor, so 
that both might be signed on the same day. But 
ten days later, when Mr. Adams notified them that 



290 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

our minister to France had returned to Paris to 
propose there the same arrangements, Lord Rus- 
sell wrote him: "On the part of Great Britain 
the agreement will be prospective, and will not 
invalidate anything already done." The meaning 
of this somewhat enigmatical sentence was made 
clear a few weeks later, by the announcement that 
Great Britain proposed to add to the convention 
already agreed on a declaration, "that by execut- 
ing that convention Her Majesty did not intend 
to undertake any engagement which should have 
any bearing, direct or indirect, on the internal 
difficulties prevailing in the United States." Sew- 
ard approved Mr. Adams's course in declining to 
sign the paper with this addition, which there 
seemed reason to believe an afterthought; and this 
ended the negotiations, the French government 
desiring to attach a similar condition to its assent. 
Seward's objects in proposing our assent to this 
treaty were, probably, to declare our purpose of 
conducting our contest with the South under the 
humane rules agreed on by the leading nations of 
the world, and also to preclude the recognition 
of privateers under Jefferson Davis's letters of 
marque as vessels having any legal status. Before 
the declaration of May 6th this result might have 
followed the unqualified acceptance of our assent 
to this treaty; but after recognizing the Confeder- 
acy as a belligerent both Great Britain and France 
were in honor bound to take no step which might 
impose on them obligations inconsistent with this 



THE TREATY OF PARIS 291 

position. Seward was equally right in declining 
to accept the arrangement proposed. It would 
not have been the Treaty of Paris to which we 
should thus have become parties, but a different 
and special convention with England and France, 
implying an acquiescence in the assumption of 
these governments that we were no longer the sov- 
ereign of the States in insurrection, and had no 
power to treat for them, an admission which would 
have been irreconcilable with our position, that 
the integrity of the republic was unbroken and 
the government of the United States supreme, so 
far as foreign nations were concerned, as well for 
war as for peace, over all the States, all sections, 
and all citizens, the loyal not more than the dis- 
loyal, the patriots and insurgents alike. ^ Seward 
was of opinion, however, that the real objection of 
the English government to giving an unqualified 
assent to our adherence to the Treaty of Paris was, 
that by the middle of August it was well under- 
stood that any vessels cruising as Confederate 
privateers would be English ships, and that Great 
Britain, while opposed to this mode of warfare in 
the abstract and on principle, was perfectly willing 
to become the patron of privateering when aimed 
at our devastation. 

Though they knew that Jefferson Davis, after 
his call for privateers, would not assent to the pro- 
visions of this treaty as a whole, — the only way 
in which there was any provision in the treaty 

1 Seward to Adams, July 25, 1861. 



292 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

itself for its acceptance, — the British ministry- 
thought it sufficiently important to secure his ad- 
herence to the other articles (those relating to 
neutral and enemy property and to blockade) to 
open negotiations with him, for the purpose of 
obtaining this. They selected as their agent in 
this matter an Englishman, — their own consul at 
Charleston, accredited to the United States, whose 
exequatur was unrevoked. Voluntarily to open 
direct negotiations with the insurgents was a pro- 
ceeding sufficiently contemptuous of the United 
States, and encouragingly near to complete recog- 
nition; and so Mr. Bunch, the consul, an active 
sympathizer with secession, considered it. He 
successfully performed the mission intrusted to 
him, and obtained the adhesion of the Confederacy 
to these articles; but was indiscreet enough to 
claim much more. The bearer of his letters to 
his government, having crossed the Union lines 
without permission, was arrested, his papers were 
taken from him, and among them was found a 
letter saying, "Mr. B. on oath of secrecy commu- 
nicated to me also that thQ first step to recognition 
was taken. . . . This is the first step to direct 
treating with our government, so prepare for active 
business by 1st January." The whole matter hav- 
ing in this way come to Seward's knowledge, he 
remonstrated, protesting against Great Britain's 
employing one of their public officers accredited 
to and recognized by the United States, and still, 
in the legal view of both governments, exercising 



SUSPENSION OF HABEAS CORPUS 293 

his functions there, to conduct a negotiation with 
insurgents in arms against this government, whether 
the insurgents were to be considered as simple reb- 
els, as we viewed them, or to be treated as belli- 
gerents, as Great Britain had acknowledged them. 
The English government expressed neither regret 
nor apology. They maintained the supercilious 
tone which characterized much of their correspon- 
dence during the war, until Gettysburg and Vicks- 
burg demonstrated that the suppression of the re- 
bellion was merely a question of time. The whole 
proceeding shows how illogical and inconsistent 
was the attitude of England and France during 
our domestic difficulties. The rebels were parties 
to a war; they were amenable to, and to be gov- 
erned by, the laws of war; they were sufficiently 
a nation to be asked to become parties to a treaty, 
yet not so far a nation as to permit negotiations 
for this purpose to be conducted in any regular 
manner. 

Not long after the attack on Sumter, the Presi- 
dent, acting upon the opinion of the attorney-gen- 
eral that he had the power to do so, suspended the 
writ of habeas corpus without any special legisla- 
tion authorizing it. Chief Justice Taney held this 
suspension illegal; thereupon, when a British citi- 
zen residing here, arrested and held without regu- 
lar process, was unable to obtain relief by apply- 
ing for this writ. Lord Russell undertook to open 
a diplomatic discussion as to the constitutionality 



294 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

of the President's action. Seward courteously but 
peremptorily declined to enter upon any such dis- 
cussion, or to permit the constitutionality of any 
act of the administration to be called in question 
by any foreign power, and the attempt was not 
renewed. Nevertheless every foreigner arrested 
by arbitrary pi'ocess naturally appealed to his min- 
ister, in the hope that diplomatic influence might 
procure his discharge. Most of these foreigners 
were Englishmen; their cases occujiied a great 
deal of time, and were a constant source of worry 
and anxiety to Seward during the greater part of 
the war. At first, and until Mr. Stanton became 
secretary of war, all these arrests, as well of our 
own citizens as of foreigners, were under the direc- 
tion of the State Department, and during this 
period Seward was earning with the disloyal and 
their friends the name of a tyrant with his hands 
full of despotic orders of arrest and imprisonment, 
— a reputation which clung to him long after he 
had ceased to have any charge of these matters. 

The accusation of officious intermeddling, which 
has been to some extent taken up as a popular cry 
against him, has its origin in these and other acts 
of his during the first year of the rebellion, when 
the War Department was much disorganized by 
the desertion of Southern officers and clerks, and 
was also excessively overworked. There were many 
things which needed to be done — some of them 
disagreeable, — which did not properly belong to 
the secretary of state, but which no one else seemed 



SUSPENSION OF HABEAS CORPUS 295 

able to find time or inclination to do. At the 
President's request and to the entire satisfaction 
of all loyal citizens, Seward undertook the respon- 
sibility and burden of some of these matters. In 
doing so, he was no more guilty of officious inter- 
meddling than were the "great war governors," 
whose zealous loyalty induced them to overstep 
the strict line of official duty and endeavor to re- 
lieve the War Department of some of the burdens 
of the equipment and transportation of troops, 
which properly belonged to the general govern- 
ment. There is no reason to believe that Seward 
had any motives for what he did other than patri- 
otic ones; he had in a high degree the fervor and 
lofty spirit which then animated and dignified the 
country. The time had arrived of which he had 
spoken, when we were to see "how nobly, how 
firmly, a great people could act in preserving their 
Constitution." 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE TRENT 

The summer of 1861 wore away without further 
serious diplomatic trouble. The defeat at Bull 
Eun, and the later repulse at Ball's Bluff, con- 
firmed the general European opinion of the ulti- 
mate success of the seceding States. It had se- 
verely taxed Seward's optimism and ability, to 
minimize in his dispatches to our ministers the 
character and effect of these failures. Our suc- 
cesses in the AYest were too remote to offset them 
with the public ; and the importance of the capture 
of the forts and garrisons at Hatteras Inlet, Port 
Eoyal, and Hilton Head, and of the occupation 
of these points by the Union forces, was too little 
understood to check the tide of European oi3inion, 
which was running strongly against us. There 
was a time in the autumn when Seward, fairly 
disheartened, wrote home: "I have had two weeks 
of intense anxiety and severe labor. The pressure 
. . . which disunionists have procured to operate 
on the cabinets of London and Paris has made it 
doubtful whether we can escape the yet deeper 
and darker abyss of foreign war. ... I have 
worried through and finished my dispatches. They 
must go for good or evil. I have done my best." 



i 



THE TRENT 297 

The moment which Seward thought so gloomy 
seemed to Jefferson Davis auspicious for a vigor- 
ous and determined effort to obtain from England 
and France the full recognition of the Southern 
Confederacy as an independent nation ; and early 
in the autumn he sent James M. Mason, of Vir- 
ginia, to England, and John Slidell, of Louisiana, 
to France, as commissioners to open negotiations 
for this purpose. Slidell was a Northerner by 
birth, who had made his fortune in Louisiana, and 
who, while still United States senator from that 
State, had been, during Buchanan's administra- 
tion, a most zealous and efficient worker in the 
cause of secession, using his official position to 
break up the government of which he was a mem- 
ber. Mason, if less conspicuous, had been no less 
earnest, and had done all in his power to prevent 
a free, honest, and independent vote in Virginia 
on the question of the secession of that State. If 
the United States were a government and not a 
mere voluntary association, both were traitors, and 
both were especially odious and infamous in the 
eyes of the loyal people of the country. On a 
dark night in October these envoys with their 
families and secretaries ran the blockade at Charles- 
ton in the little steamer Theodora, and arrived 
safely at Havana, where, after receiving much 
attention from the authorities, they embarked on 
the British mai! steamer Trent for St. Thomas, 
proposing to sail thence for England. The United 
States frigate San Jacinto, commanded by Captain 



298 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

Charles Wilkes, boarded the Trent between Ha- 
vana and St. Thomas; but instead of putting on 
board a prize crew and sending the steamer to a 
port of the United States, that the question of her 
liability to condemnation, as a neutral carrying 
contraband of war, might be settled in a prize 
court, Captain Wilkes, out of consideration for 
the convenience of the other passengers and for 
the regular business of the steamer, contented him- 
self with taking on board his own ship the commis- 
sioners and their secretaries, leaving the Trent to 
continue her voyage with her other passengers and 
her mails. 

When the news of this reached England the 
excitement was intense, public opinion was unani- 
mous, and the public passion at fever heat. The 
British flag had been insulted ; the prisoners must 
be given up and a suitable apology made. Troops 
were at once ordered to Canada and ships of war 
were made ready for sea; in the arsenals and dock- 
yards the business of preparation was pushed for- 
ward day and night and even on Sunday ; and the 
first transport left the Mersey with the regimental 
band playing "I wish I was in Dixie." The Brit- 
ish ministry had some time before received infor- 
mation from a source which they professed to 
think worthy of belief, that the government of the 
United States was expecting Mason and Slidell to 
embark on the Trent, and had given express orders 
for their capture. On the receipt of this informa- 
tion the law officers of the crown had been con- 



THE TRENT 299 

suited, and had advised the ministry that a United 
States man-of-war overhauling the Trent, captur- 
ing her and carrying her into port, would be exer- 
cising a recognized belligerent right; but that if 
she merely took the Confederate commissioners 
and their dispatches and let the steamer go, she 
would be clearly wrong; or, as has been said, "if 
the British flag were more grossly insulted there 
would be less or no cause of complaint." After 
exact information of what had been done was re- 
ceived in England, the queen's legal advisers, 
being again consulted, reiterated their opinion; so 
that upon the actual facts the British case ap- 
peared quite perfect. The English ministers had 
been told by Miss Slidell that the officer who 
boarded the Trent stated that the commander of 
the San Jacinto had no instructions, but was act- 
ing solely on his own responsibility. They, how- 
ever, permitted the receipt of this information and 
even an authentic confirmation of the officer's state- 
ment to be denied by the party press, though they 
communicated it to the queen when the dispatch, as 
originally drafted, was shown her. The queen was 
distressed at the peremptory tone of this paper ; at 
her request Prince Albert prepared a memorandum 
embodying her views, and the dispatch was modi- 
fied to conform to them. A pathetic interest at- 
taches to this incident from the fact that Prince 
Albert was at the time suffering from the illness 
which shortly afterwards proved fatal, and that 
this memorandum was the last thing he ever wrote. 



300 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

The officer who boarded the Trent had stated 
the simple truth, — Wilkes was acting solely on 
his own judgment and responsibility. The first 
knowledge that either our government or people 
had of the matter was by a telegram from Fortress 
Monroe, where the San Jacinto touched for coal 
(November 15, 16, 1861), and proceeding thence 
directly to New York was met in the harbor there 
by orders to carry the prisoners to Boston, and 
deliver them to the commandant at Fort Warren. 
By universal consent Wilkes became at once a 
hero; the newspapers and the people praised him 
as if he had won a great naval victory; he was 
feasted in Boston, and honored in New York. 
The secretary of the navy on receiving his report 
wrote him: "Especially do I congratulate you on 
the great public service you have rendered in the 
capture of the rebel commissioners. . . . Your 
condvict in seizing these public enemies was marked 
by intelligence, ability, decision, and firmness, 
and has the emphatic approval of this department." 
The annual report of the Navy Department re- 
peated and indorsed this approval, and when Con- 
gress met, the House of Eepresentatives voted 
Captain Wilkes a gold medal for his good conduct 
in promptly arresting the rebel ambassadors. 

Except the letter from the secretary of the navy, 
and the passage in his report which may be fairly 
taken as representing his own opinion at the time, 
there is little if any contemporary evidence as to 
what the President or any member of his cabinet 



THE TRENT 301 

thought about the matter when the news of the 
capture of the commissioners first reached them. 
In writing from his recollection ten years later, 
Mr. Welles, whose object at that time was to de- 
preciate Seward, said "that no man was more 
elated or jubilant than Seward at the capture of 
the emissaries, and that for a time he made no 
attempt to conceal his gratification and approval 
of the act of Wilkes." Without actually indors- 
ing this assertion of Mr. Welles, or bringing for- 
ward a single fact in its support, Mr. Lincoln's 
biographers say : " Mr. Seward was doubtless elated 
by the first news that the rebel envoys were cap- 
tured." So far as can be ascertained, there is 
nothing to justify either statement. 

Dr. Russell, the correspondent of the "London 
Times," who was in Washington when the news 
of the capture reached there, says that "at the 
State Department there was a judicious reticence 
observed about it." Mr. Sumner, arriving there 
for the opening of Congress, writes: "I learned 
from the President and from Mr. Seward that 
neither had committed himself on the Trent affair, 
and that it was an absolutely unauthorized act. 
Mr. Seward told me that he was reserving himself 
in order to see what view England would take." 
Even to his family Seward said nothing. The 
only allusion to the affair that appears in any do- 
mestic letter prior to the settlement of the case 
is contained in a single line, "The Mason and 
Slidell affair will try the British temper." 



302 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

His son, then the assistant secretary of state, 
and in daily confidential relations with him, and 
who was also his biographer, whose narrative of 
the whole transaction is founded not upon his 
recollection, but upon notes made at the time,^ 
speaks of his abstaining from all conversation on 
the subject. Seward did see McClellan on the 
17th of November.^ There seems to be no reason, 
however, to suppose that McClellan was volunteer- 
ing his advice, as he has been charged with doing ; 
on the contrary, it has been said on trustworthy 
authority that Seward sent for McClellan when he 
first learned of the capture, and asked him what 
we could do if Great Britain made a peremptory 
demand for Mason and Slidell, and the alternative 
was either their surrender or war; that he was 
told in reply that if we went to war with England 
we must at once abandon all hope of keeping the 
South in the Union; and that he thereupon said 
that, "if the matter took that turn, they must be 
at once given up."^ It is further to be observed 
that the subject was not alluded to in the Presi- 
dent's message, and, Mr. Sumner tells us, was not 
touched upon in the cabinet or in conversation. 

The first thing which Seward is known to have 
said or written about this affair is his confidential 
letter to Mr. Adams, on November 27, in which 
he cautiously refrains from expressing any opinion, 

1 Letter of F. W. Seward, February, 1896. 

2 McClellan's Own Story, pp. 175, 176. 

' R. H. Dana, Jr., to the writer, January, 1862. 



THE TRENT 303 

and says : " I forbear from speaking of the capture 
of Messrs. Mason and Slidell. The act was done 
by Commodore Wilkes, without instructions, and 
even without the knowledge of the government. 
Lord Lyons has judiciously refrained from all 
communication with me on the subject, and I 
thought it equally wise to reserve ourselves until 
we hear what the British government may have to 
say." Seward repeated this in an official dispatch 
of November 30, which was communicated to the 
British government, but which, as has already 
been said, was not suffered to find its way to the 
public, while its statements were denied by the 
ministerial press. From the day when the capture 
was first known Mr. Seward and the British min- 
ister did not meet, until on the 19th of December 
Lord Lj'^ons came to the State Department, and 
acquainted Mr. Seward in general terms with the 
tenor of Lord Eussell's dispatch. 

The reserve of Seward and Lord Lyons, and 
their avoidance of each other during this month 
of waiting, show how strongly both felt the grav- 
ity of the situation, and their apprehension of 
most serious consequences. If Seward hoped that 
the British demand might leave some loophole for 
negotiation, he had evidently foreseen the possi- 
bility that the English might take a tone which 
left us only the alternatives of the surrender of 
our prisoners or of war, and had decided upon his 
course if this should be the case. 

It was insisted in Lord Russell's dispatch that 



304 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

the forcible taking of the commissioners from a 
neutral ship pursuing a lawful and innocent voy- 
age was an affront to the British flag, and a viola- 
tion of international law; and a confident hope 
was expressed that, when the matter was brought 
under the consideration of our government, it 
would voluntarily offer the only redress that could 
satisfy the British nation, — the restoration of the 
captured persons to British protection, and an 
apology for the aggression committed. The de- 
mand for an apology was not pressed, and no apo- 
logy was ever made. That for the return of the 
prisoners, if not uncourteous in tone, was absolute 
and peremptory. Two sets of private instructions 
to Lord Lyons accompanied the dispatch. Both 
these, however, were at the time unknown to our 
government and to Seward. The first of them 
gave to the demand the character of a threat. It 
directed Lord Lyons, if it should not be complied 
with in seven days, to close the legation, remove 
the archives, notify the admiral of the British 
Atlantic fleet and the governors of the North 
American and West Indian colonies, and return 
home; but the second private note, written later, 
and apparently intended to soften the public dis- 
patch as well as the earlier instructions, gave him 
a discretion which would tend to avoid a war, and 
expressed the wish that he would not formally de- 
liver the dispatch at once, but prepare the way, 
and ask Mr. Seward before its delivery to settle 
with the President and cabinet the course they 



THE TRENT 305 

would propose. Acting upon these suggestions, 
Lord Lyons on December 19 called at the State 
Department, as has been said, and stated to Mr. 
Seward the substance of the British demands, and 
on the Monday following (December 23) read to 
him his dispatch, and left with him a copy. In this 
interval the secretary had not been idle. The man- 
ner in which he employed the time leaves no room 
for doubt that he had already carefully considered 
the situation and studied the law of the case, and 
had determined not only what he should answer if 
the British demand were for an absolute surrender 
of the men, but also the grounds on which he would 
rest his compliance. Shutting himself in his room, 
and barring his door against all interruption, he 
began at once the draft of his reply. 

The cabinet met on Christmas day (Wednesday), 
and Seward read them his proposed answer. He 
writes : " It (the case) was considered on my pre- 
sentation of it on the 25th and 26th of December. 
The government, when it took the subject up, had 
no idea of the grounds upon which it would ex- 
plain its action, nor did it believe it would concede 
the case. Yet it was heartily unanimous in the 
actual residt after two days' examination, and in 
favor of the release."^ Two other members of 
the cabinet have given us accounts of these meet- 
ings which are entirely in accord with this state- 
ment. Mr. Bates, the attorney-general, in his 

^ Letter to Weed, January 2, 1862. Memoirs of Thurlow Weed, 
u. p. 409. 



306 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

diary says: "Seward read his proposed dispatch; 
it was examined and criticised by us with appar- 
ently perfect candor and frankness. All of us 
were impressed with the magnitude of the subject. 
... I urged the necessity of the case, — that to 
go to war with England is to abandon all hope of 
suppressing the rebellion. . . . The maritime su- 
periority of Britain would sweep us from all the 
Southern waters. Our trade would be utterly 
ruined and our treasury bankrupt. There was 
great reluctance on the part of some of the mem- 
bers of the cabinet — and even the President him- 
self — to acknowledge these obvious truths; but 
all yielded to, and unanimously concurred in, Mr. 
Seward's letter, . . . after some verbal and formal 
amendments."^ Mr. Chase wrote in his journal: 
"I give my adhesion, therefore, to the conclusion 
at which the secretary of state has arrived. It is 
gall and wormwood to me. But I am consoled by 
the reflection that . . . the surrender under exist- 
ing circumstances is . . . simply giving the most 
signal proof that the American nation will not, 
under any circumstances, . . . commit even a 
technical wrong against neutrals."^ 

Mr. Lincoln's biographers and other writers 
have assumed or claimed that the settlement of 
the Trent case was substantially his work, that 
his judgment favored the surrender of the prison- 
ers, and that he intimated to Seward the need 

^ N.^H. V. p. 35. 

* Warden's Life of Chase, p. 394. 



THE TRENT 307 

of finding good diplomatic reasons for so doing. 
Whatever Mr. Lincoln said, thought, or did about 
this matter can neither greatly add to nor detract 
from his fame, which rests upon other and wholly 
distinct grounds; but justice to Seward demands 
that he should receive in this matter the credit to 
which he is fairly entitled. It is only so far as 
they are consistent with what we know from con- 
temporary evidence that Mr. Lincoln actually said 
or did at the time, that credit should be given to 
the personal recollections of the popular writer, 
who tells us that on the day when the news of the 
capture of the commissioners reached Washington 
he went to the White House in company with a 
treasury official and saw the President, who said 
to him: "We must stick to American principles 
concerning the rights of neutrals. We fought 
Great Britain for insisting by theory and practice 
on the right to do precisely what Captain Wilkes 
has done. If Great Britain shall now protest 
against the act, and demand their release, we must 
give them up, apologize for the act as a violation 
of their doctrines, and thus forever bind her over 
to keep the peace in relation to neutrals, and so 
acknowledge she has been wrong for sixty years." ^ 
This story was first published more than seven 
years after the transaction took place, and nearly 
three years after Lincoln's death. It has never 
been confirmed ; though it has been quoted again 
and again by writers of history and biography, 
1 Lossing's Pictorial History of the Civil War, ii. pp. 156, 157. 



308 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

who sometimes give credit to Mr. Lossing and 
sometimes do not. Whatever one may think as 
to the substance of the alleged conversation, it is 
evident that the language as reported is Mr. Los- 
sing's own, and not that of Mr. Lincoln; and it 
will be quite as apparent, when we come to exam- 
ine what we do really know about Mr. Lincoln's 
conduct in this matter, that, if he said anything 
which justified Mr. Lossing' s statement, it was a 
mere passing thought, not the expression of any 
fixed conviction. The anecdote related by Mr. 
Welles was so often told at the time that it may 
fairly be considered as supported by contempora- 
neous proof. "The President," says Mr. Welles, 
" was from the first impressed with the gravity of 
the situation, and thought the capture embarrass- 
ing. His chief anxiety was as to the disposition 
of the prisoners, who, to use his own expression, 
would be elephants on our hands that we could 
not easily dispose of. Public indignation was so 
overwhelming against the chief conspirators that 
he feared it would be difficult to prevent severe 
and exemplary punishment, which he always de- 
precated." This opinion is quite different from 
what Mr. Lossing reports to have been the Presi- 
dent's views expressed to him on the same day, 
even if the two accounts are not absolutely incon- 
sistent with one another. 

Of the President's subsequent reticence we have 
already spoken. Sumner, after his arrival in 
Washington, writes that he has "seen him almost 



THE TRENT 309 

daily and most intimately ever since the Trent 
question has been under discussion, ^ and that he 
has pressed upon him arbitration." But, though 
he speaks of the President as being "essentially 
honest and pacific in disposition, with a natural 
slowness," he does not give us in his published 
letters the slightest hint that he had heard him 
express any opinion as to the affair of the Trent. 

After Lincoln's death there was found among 
his papers the draft of a letter proposing arbitra- 
tion as a solution of the difficulty. This was prob- 
ably written under the influence of the interviews 
in which Sumner urged this course. It was never 
submitted to the cabinet, but it is an authentic 
piece of evidence in his own handwriting, that he 
was seriously considering this aspect of the matter. 

The intimation that there were confidential in- 
terviews between the President and Seward as to 
this case, of which no record has been kept, and 
the further suggestion, that the President inti- 
mated to Seward, while he himself was considering 
the desirableness of arbitration, that, as only a 
few days of the grace allowed by the British gov- 
ernment for our ultimate decision of the matter 
remained, he should find good diplomatic grounds 
for the surrender of our prisoners, are both gratui- 
tous. There is no foundation for either of them. 
The latter falls to the ground, as neither the Presi- 
dent nor the secretary had any knowledge at the 
time that Lord Lyons was instructed absolutely to 
1 Life, iv. p. 60. 



310 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

require his answer within a limited period, much 
less that that period had nearly expired. The 
former Is Inconsistent not only with Seward's own 
statement In his letter to Weed already quoted, 
but also with the President's reluctance, as shown 
by Mr. Bates, to acquiesce in the conclusion of 
Seward's dispatch and the surrender of the pris- 
oners; and it is further practically contradicted 
by Seward's biographer, who teUs us — from his 
memorandum made at the time — that when the 
cabinet separated on Christmas day after discuss- 
ing Seward's dispatch, the President said to him: 
"Your answer states the reasons why they ought 
to be given up ; now I 've a mind to try my hand 
at stating the reasons why they ought not to be 
given up; " but told him the next day that he could 
not make an argument that satisfied his own mind, 
and that this proved to him that Seward's ground 
was the right one. 

The contemporary evidence all points one way : 
it shows that Lincoln took no lead In the deci- 
sion of the matter, but acquiesced, as the members 
of the cabinet did, in the reasoning and conclu- 
sions of Seward's dispatch, convinced, though 
against his will, that the result which Seward had 
reached could not be avoided. 

Seward's dispatch, whatever be Its merits or 
defects, is distinctly a teclmlcal document. It 
has been called an attorney's plea. The question 
was one of law, and he properly treated It as such. 
His paper bears evidence of a most careful and 



THE TRENT 311 

exhaustive study of the adjudicated cases, and of 
the discussions in the text-books and elsewhere 
having any bearing on the question at issue ; the 
internal evidence as well as the historical facts 
show that, both in its general scope and in its de- 
tails, it was the work of one mind, and that Sew- 
ard's alone. The cabinet, as we know, adopted 
it after discussion, making only some verbal and 
formal amendments, and on the same day it was 
delivered to Lord Lyons. 

Before considering the argument of the dispatch, 
a few words on international law and the political 
situation of the country at that time may not be 
amiss. The sources of public international law 
are to be found in those practices universally ad- 
mitted and recognized as legitimate by the usage 
of civilized nations, in historical precedents, and 
in the decisions of the prize courts. In every war 
there are two or more belligerents. Other coun- 
tries, not engaged in the war, are known as neu- 
trals. Neutral nations naturally desire, if they 
are commercial people, to have their merchantmen 
free from liability to capture and condemnation, 
and their trade with any belligerent as secure and 
untrammeled as possible. They constantly en- 
deavor to procure such mitigations of the estab- 
lished rules of international law, and such liberal 
interpretations of these rules, as will enable them 
to extend in every way the uniformly profitable 
commerce of neutrals in war time. On the other 
hand, belligerents, if maritime powers, contend 



312 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

for a strict construction and rigorous enforcement 
of these rules, in order that neutral trading with 
the enemy may be reduced within the narrowest 
limits. 

From the time of the formation of our govern- 
ment we had uniformly contended for the largest 
extension of the rights of neutrals, for in all the 
European wars we had been a neutral nation. 
But now the positions were reversed. We were 
engaged in a contest for the suppression of a for- 
midable rebellion; and were employing for that 
purpose all the recognized methods of modern 
warfare, both on land and at sea. Other nations 
had declared the insurrection a war, had recog- 
nized the insurgents as belligerents, and proclaimed 
their own neutrality. Commercial intercourse with 
the insurgents was of immense profit to these na- 
tions, especially to Great Britain, and was of vital 
importance to the States in rebellion. We had 
established a blockade to put a stop to this com- 
merce. Whatever claims we might have previ- 
ously put forth as neutrals, we could not now 
afford to make concessions impairing any right 
heretofore claimed by belligerents, much less any 
undisputed right. If Mason and Slidell were to 
be surrendered, care must be taken in stating the 
grounds for their release that no admission was 
made and no position taken which in any future 
contingency could be turned against us. 

The successful enforcement of our blockade de- 
pended on the energy, vigilance, and prompt and 



THE TRENT 313 

courageous action of the officers of our navy. It 
had been charged that these officers were not suffi- 
ciently alert and watchful. If the zeal of Captain 
Wilkes should meet with anything like a rebuff 
or rebuke, it would certainly tend to discourage 
other commanders, and induce them to slacken 
their exertions, which it was important to quicken. 
The secretary of the navy and one branch of Con- 
gress had already thanked Wilkes for what he had 
done ; it was most undesirable that anything should 
be said which could be interpreted as a reflection 
upon their action. The whole country had lav- 
ished on him unstinted praise; men of eminence 
and intelligence, with hardly a dissenting voice, 
had maintained the legality of his capture and 
conduct; this universal outburst of patriotic feel- 
ing and concord of public opinion were not to be 
rudely checked or wholly disregarded. The people 
did not understand the military exigencies of the 
situation, and they were entirely unprepared for 
the surrender of our prisoners; the reasons for 
giving up the rebel envoys must be so put that they 
would, at the same time, both satisfy lx^c judgment 
and save the pride of the nation. To do this was 
not an easy task; but Seward's dispatch met these 
various requirements so far as possible. 

Lord Kussell had assumed that in what had 
been done we claimed to be exercising a right, — 
similar to that on which Great Britain had relied 
to justify her taking from our vessels persons al- 
leged to be her seamen, — a sort of ocean police 



314 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

for municipal purposes over vessels of a foreign 
country, which would authorize any belligerent to 
take from a neutral vessel rebels, criminals, de- 
serters, or even the citizens of a hostile country. 

This Seward at once disclaimed. After reciting 
the facts as stated by Lord Russell and adding 
what seemed necessary to the correct understand- 
ing of the matter, he went on to say that, instead 
of being a flagrant act of violence on the part of 
Captain Wilkes, what he did was undertaken as 
a simple, legal, and customary belligerent proceed- 
ing, the arrest of a neutral vessel engaged in carry- 
ing contraband of war for the use and benefit of 
the insurgents. He then proceeded to enumerate 
and discuss the questions involved. These were, 
as he stated them: Were the commissioners and 
their secretaries with their dispatches contraband 
of war? — Could Cajitain Wilkes lawfully stop 
and search the vessel for those persons and their 
dispatches? — Did he exercise that right in a legal 
and proper manner? — Having found the contra- 
band persons on board and in presumed possession 
of the contraband dispatches, had he a right to 
capture the persons? If so, did he exercise this 
right in the manner allowed and recognized by 
the law of nations? 

It was not denied that persons in the military 
or naval service of the enemy are contraband. 
The question was, whether ambassadors, their 
suites and their dispatches, fall within the same 
category. Mr. Seward maintained the affirma- 



THE TRENT 315 

tive, relying principally on the opinion of an emi- 
nent expounder of prize law, Sir William Scott, 
judge of the British Admiralty Court, that: "You 
may stop the ambassador of your enemy on his 
passage. Dispatches are not less clearly contra- 
band, and their bearers fall under the same con- 
demnation; . . . when it is of sufficient impor- 
tance to the enemy that persons shall be sent on 
the public service at the public expense, it is only 
reasonable that it should afford equal ground of 
forfeiture against a vessel that it has been let out 
for a purpose so intimately connected with hostile 
operations." It was contended by Mr. Sumner, 
in his speech on the Trent case delivered in the 
Senate a few weeks later, that neither Mason nor 
Slidell, not being persons in the military service, 
nor their dispatches, were contraband of war. 
But it may be questioned whether, though neutrals 
might take this ground. Sir William Scott's doc- 
trine may not be defended, if not as a universal 
rule, at least as one of limited application. While 
all dispatches may not be contraband, there are 
some dispatches which it would be an insult to 
common sense not to declare contraband. It would 
have been a great mistake for Seward to have con- 
ceded, while we were in the midst of a war, that 
under no circumstances could the ambassador of a 
belligerent and his dispatches be contraband, — 
even though their successful transit in a neutral 
vessel might give more aid and comfort to an 
enemy than many thousand stands of arms. The 



316 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

right of Captain Wilkes to detain and search the 
Trent, though she was proceeding from one neutral 
port to another, Mr. Seward justified by the mari- 
time law as expounded by British magistrates and 
uniformly maintained by the British government. 

That the right of search, if it existed, was exer- 
cised in a lawful and proper manner was hardly 
disputable, nor, if it were once admitted that the 
envoys and their dispatches were contraband, was 
there any question of the Trent's liability to cap- 
ture. 

There remained only the inquiry whether Cap- 
tain Wilkes had exercised his right of capture in 
conformity with the law. The law requires that 
the captor should bring the captured vessel into a 
convenient port, and there subject the validity of 
her capture and condemnation to the adjudication 
and decision of the proper admiralty court. If an 
overwhelming necessity prevents his doing this, 
the captor is excused, but not otherwise. In this 
case, upon the captain's own admission, a consid- 
eration of the derangement and disappointment it 
would cause innocent passengers had operated, per- 
haps more powerfully than any other motive, in 
inducing him to remove to his own ship the per- 
sons claimed to be contraband, and to suffer the 
Trent to proceed on her voyage. Though in so 
doing he followed exactly the practice of the Brit- 
ish officers in carrying off from our merchant ves- 
sels sailors whom they claimed to be British sub- 
jects, against which we had so often protested in 



THE TRENT 317 

vain; yet by converting Lis quarter deck into a 
court of law, and constituting himself a judge in 
his own case, he violated the established rule that 
questions of prize are not to be decided on the 
spot by the captor, but are to be determined upon 
a full and impartial investigation before a compe- 
tent and regularly organized judicial tribunal. 
The United States had always insisted upon this 
course, and had so uniformly protested against 
just such proceedings as took place in this case, 
that it was impossible for us to admit their suffi- 
ciency and regularity; the prisoners must, there- 
fore, be returned. 

It was upon this narrow ground that the sur- 
render of Mason and Slidell was determined. The 
merits of this mode of dealing with the case were : 
that it yielded no point of international law on 
which we might at any time desire to rest a claim 
as belligerents, but made the decision depend on 
a doctrine and practice universally recognized in 
modern civilized warfare as the only lawful mode 
of treating a prize; that it gave due credit to 
Wilkes for all the qualities which we wished our 
naval officers to cultivate and exhibit, and only 
indirectly criticised and lamented his courtesy and 
leniency; that it appeared to follow to their legiti- 
mate conclusion the doubts suggested by the secre- 
tary of the navy as to the possible consequences of 
Wilkes's failure to bring in the Trent; that it 
showed, therefore, that the government had from 
the outset been conscious of the weak point of the 



318 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

case, and that its first official utterance in Secre- 
tary Welles's letter to Captain Wilkes was not 
inconsistent with the final conclusion of the secre- 
tary of state. 

As the dispatch followed precisely the argument, 
and reached precisely the conclusions of the British 
crown lawyers, on exactly the grounds on which 
they relied, though this was not then known to us, 
it weakened any criticism on the part of the Brit- 
ish government. From the whole transaction we 
gained this advantage, — that the surrendering of 
these men so promptly and with so little discussion 
made both the ministry and the people of England 
ashamed of their violence and haste; and Messrs. 
Mason and Slidell instead of being England's 
heroes became her "white elephants," not ours. 
They were quietly taken early one winter morning 
from Fort Warren to Provincetown, where they 
were delivered on board the British frigate Ri- 
naldo. They arrived in England, January 29, 
1862. For seven weeks they had been heroes; 
but the tide was already running against them, 
and the English did not require the encouragement 
of the "Times " to "let the fellows alone." 

When exactly what Captain Wilkes had done 
was known in England, the law officers of the 
crown were again consulted. Somewhat modify- 
ing their former opinions, they then advised the 
ministry, that enemy's dispatches and their bearers 
were contraband ; but that if the dispatches were 
so successfully concealed as to escape discovery 



THE TRENT 319 

and seizure, the bearer, whether an ambassador or 
any other person, could no longer be taken. 

In his original demand Lord Russell had made 
no allusion to the supposed diplomatic character of 
Mason and Slidell. The complaint of the British 
government was simply that one of our cruisers 
had forcibly stopped a neutral vessel on an inno- 
cent voyage, and taken from her two persons. In 
his reply to Mr. Seward, written after the surren- 
der of the prisoners, Lord Russell denied that 
ambassadors were contraband of war subjecting 
the vessel to seizure. Mr. Seward, as has been 
stated, had maintained the contrary. The case 
therefore leaves that question exactly as it was 
before. 

The surrender of our prisoners being placed 
upon the well settled rule, that a captor cannot 
take out of a prize either persons or property as 
contraband without bringing in the vessel for ad- 
judication, unless he is necessarily prevented from 
so doing, the decision settled in this respect no 
new principle of international law. But Lord 
Russell persisted in his original contention, that 
a belligerent cannot on any pretense take persons 
out of a neutral vessel, thus not merely admitting 
but insisting on what we as a nation had claimed 
for years; this doctrine, therefore, for which we 
had so long contended in vain, must now be con- 
sidered an established rule of international law.^ 

1 Dana's Wheaton, p. 649, note. 



CHAPTER XIX 

INTERVENTION — CABINET DIFFICULTIES — EMAN- 
CIPATION 

Erom the time that Seward learned that France 
had invited both England and Russia to act in 
concert with her as to our affairs, and that, though 
Eussia had declined, England had agreed to do 
so, he was very uneasy as to the possible conse- 
quences. He feared that this arrangement might 
lead to offers of mediation, and, if these were not 
accepted by our government, to a recognition of 
the independence of the South, if not to more posi- 
tive intervention on its behalf. He was not aware 
that M. Mercier, the French minister to this coun- 
try, had already in March (1861) advised the 
emperor to recognize the Confederacy, and two 
months later had recommended the raising of the 
blockade; nor did he know that in October of that 
year, when our summer's campaign had ended in 
disaster, there had been a correspondence between 
the British secretary of state for foreign affairs 
and the prime minister, in which Earl Russell had 
written to Lord Palmerston that while it would 
not do for England and France to break a block- 
ade for the sake of getting cotton, yet he felt sure 



INTERVENTION 321 

that France would join England in saying to both 
North and South, as had often been said to Euro- 
pean belligerents, "Make up your quarrels; we 
propose fair terms of pacification ; if your adver- 
sary accepts them, and you do not, you must ex- 
pect to see us your enemies." To which Palmer- 
ston had answered that the best policy for Great 
Britain was to go on as she had begun, and keep 
quite clear of the conflict. Seward had at the 
time no knowledge of these occurrences, but the 
discussions in Parliament, the general tone of the 
foreign press, his information as to the activity 
and persistent efforts of Jefferson Davis's emissa- 
ries both in France and England, and the letters 
of our ministers, made him keenly alive to the 
constantly increasing danger of some such move- 
ment on the part of these countries as had now 
been proposed. 

To correct the representations of the Southern 
agents and counteract their influence, he deter- 
mined to send abroad some gentlemen without 
official position, who, through the press, and by 
social intercourse with as many different circles 
and classes of people as possible, as well as with 
the leaders of public opinion, might produce more 
favorable impressions of our situation and pro- 
spects. Accordingly, in October of this year, be- 
fore the incident of the Trent, he dispatched for 
this purpose, with the President's sanction, Arch- 
bishop Hughes, the distinguished Koman Catholic 
prelate of New York, — whose position especially 



322 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

fitted him for such a mission in France, — Bishop 
Mcllvaine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
and with them his own intimate friend, the veteran 
politician and editor, Thurlow Weed. Their pre- 
sence in Europe was an advantage to us in the 
storm that arose on the news of the capture of 
Mason and Slidell ; for though they had no know- 
ledge of this matter that was not possessed by 
everybody, they were able, and especially Mr. 
Weed from his intimacy with Seward, to contra- 
dict the stories which were widely circulated and 
eagerly believed, that the secretary had the utmost 
animosity to Great Britain, and a serious purpose 
of bringing on a war between the two countries. 

The affair of the Trent absorbed for a time the 
entire attention of the British ministry and public. 
After our surrender of the rebel commissioners no 
further demands upon us from England were ex- 
pected for the moment. But a dispatch from the 
French minister for foreign affairs, received at the 
beginning of the new year, showed conclusively 
the extent of the arrangement between the two 
countries, and that, although neither the honor 
nor the interests of France were in any way af- 
fected by Captain Wilkes's conduct, yet the em- 
peror had been prepared to make the quarrel his 
own, and that we should have had both countries 
to contend with had there been a rupture between 
us and England. 

When the case of the Trent was disposed of, 
our foreign ministers, while expressing their satis- 



INTERVENTION 323 

faction at the temporary relief which this gave 
them, wrote Seward that nothing but very marked 
evidence of progress toward success would restrain 
for any length of time the hostile tendencies of 
England, which this afEair had developed. Fortu- 
nately for us, the New Year (1862) opened with a 
series of successful movements. Important points 
on the Southern coast were, one after another, taken 
and occupied by United States troops, and New 
Orleans was captured. In the West and South- 
west a succession of victories restored to the gov- 
ernment's control large portions of several of the 
States which the Confederacy had claimed as its 
own. It needed only the capture of Vicksburg, 
which then seemed close at hand, to open the Mis- 
sissippi and cut the Confederacy in two. 

During the whole war Seward had the habit of 
writing from time to time to our foreign ministers 
accounts of the military situation, as well of our 
losses as of our gains ; and these accounts, though 
colored by his natural optimism, and strenuously 
cheerful when our prospects seemed gloomiest, 
give excellent general descriptions of the important 
military movements and situations. He had pro- 
tested strongly against the recognition of the South 
as belligerents, and now, encouraged by our achieve- 
ments and prospects, he exerted all his powers of 
argument and persuasion to induce the European 
governments to withdraw this concession. But 
France declined to retract, upon the ground that 
it would be shabby to deprive the South, when it 



324 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

seemed weak, of the assurance that had been 
given when it appeared strong; and England also 
refused, giving as her reason that, although our 
immediate success then seemed j^robable, it would 
be better to wait until the victory had been actu- 
ally won. 

The Northern gains in the early months of 1862 
were followed by a series of reverses. The ad- 
vance on Richmond, for which such enormous pre- 
parations had been made, terminated in the with- 
drawal of the Union troops, after a series of bloody 
and destructive battles. The Confederates moved 
forward both in the East and West, not merely 
with the purpose of repossessing themselves of the 
places they had heretofore occupied, but of actually 
invading the North. They were at first successful. 
At the West the Northern troops retreated in 
Kentucky and Tennessee, the Confederates ad- 
vanced, and Ohio was seriously threatened ; in the 
East the Southern forces fought their way through 
Virginia, and actually invaded Maryland. They 
were driven back at Antietam, and compelled to 
retreat. Their forward movement in the West 
was checked, and there also they were obliged to 
withdraw. Before this was known in England, 
when only the news of the Confederate successes 
had reached there, it was agreed by Lord Palmer- 
ston and Lord Russell in the early autumn of 
1862, that the proper moment for intervention had 
arrived, and that, if the United States declined 
the proposed mediation, the Southern Confederacy 



INTERVENTION 325 

should be recognized as an independent nation. 
A little later, a ministerial circular was prepared, 
describing the result of the summer's campaign, 
and setting forth these views; but before the 
whole cabinet met, towards the end of October, it 
was evident that the scheme for recognition had 
failed; the tide was setting against mediation; 
the Southern victories were seen to be barren of 
results, and the opinion was gradually gaining 
ground that the superior resources and population 
of the United States would enable it eventually to 
subdue the rebellion. 

In November of the same year the French em- 
peror proposed to both England and Russia to 
join with him in offering to arrange terms of 
peace. Both countries declined to do so, and he 
made the proposition alone. It was communicated 
to Mr. Seward early in February, 1863, at a mo- 
ment of great discouragement; to the failure of 
our summer campaign had been added the disaster 
of Fredericksburg and the political defeat of the 
administration in the November elections; and 
under these disheartening circumstances Seward 
wrote his reply, refusing the offered mediation. 
His letter is remarkable for its dignity and cour- 
age, for its forcible presentation of the situation 
in which the insurrection found us, and of what 
had been done to insure success, and for the abso- 
lute reliance which it shows on the patriotism of 
the people and on their determination, at whatever 
cost, to maintain the Union in its integrity. 



326 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

"This government," he wrote, "has not the 
least thought of relinquishing the trust which has 
been confided to it by the nation under the most 
solemn of all political sanctions ; and if it had any 
such thought, it would still have abundant reason 
to know that peace, proposed at the cost of dissolu- 
tion, would be immediately, unreservedly and in- 
dignantly rejected by the American people. It 
is a great mistake that European statesmen make, 
if they suppose this people are demoralized. What- 
ever, in the case of an insurrection, the people of 
France would do to save their national existence, 
no matter how the strife might be regarded by, or 
might affect, foreign nations, just so much, and 
certainly no less, the people of the United States 
will do. If those now exercising their power 
should, through fear or faction, fall below this 
height of the national virtue, they would be speed- 
ily, yet constitutionally, replaced by others of 
sterner character and patriotism." 

No further suggestion of mediation was ever 
made. But apprehensions of some form of foreign 
interference, especially from Great Britain, were 
felt from time to time till nearly the close of the 
war. It was only on the 24th of March, 1865, 
ten days before our troops entered Riclunond, that 
Mr. Adams was able to state with confidence that 
"no further apprehension need be felt by us of 
any aggressive policy" on the other side of the 
Atlantic Ocean. 

Aside from the grave questions connected with 



INTERVENTION 327 

the war, the diplomatic events of the eighteen 
months after the surrender of Mason and Slidell, 
in which Seward found the greatest satisfaction, 
were a treaty with Great Britain for the "extirpa- 
tion of the African slave trade at once and for- 
ever,"^ and the opening of diplomatic intercourse 
with Hayti and Liberia. 

In the summer of 1862, when the army before 
Richmond seemed too reduced for any effective 
movement, Seward left Washington, carrying with 
him a letter from the President, intended to sup- 
plement his own personal efforts with the loyal 
governors and leading men at the North, to induce 
them to urge the administration to issue a fresh 
call for troops. The President could have made 
such a call without being asked ; but the military 
situation was critical, our prospects were gloomy, 
and he feared that if he did so "a general panic 
and stampede would follow." Seward did his 
work successfully. Soon after his return to Wash- 
ington, he was called upon by Mr. Seaton, the 
editor of the "National Intelligencer," who began 
the conversation in this way: "Now really, gov- 
ernor, this is a time to say something." Seward 
began to speak of the need of reinforcements, and 
the promptness with which they were arriving; 
but, either induced by what Mr. Seaton said, or 
guessing the object of his visit, he turned to per- 
sonal matters, and added that "every rumor of 
a division of counsels, and of a conflict about 
1 April 8, 1862. 



328 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

generals, tended to defeat this (the arrival of rein- 
forcements); that he therefore felt at liberty to 
state that he had never exercised a power or duty 
in the progress of the war with which he was not 
specially charged by the President, and in the per- 
formance of which he was not always in free com- 
munication with him. That to no one had he ever 
expressed distrust of the President, or of any of 
his associates in the government; but on the con- 
trary had uniformly supported them. That he 
had not been quick or willing to entertain com- 
plaints against any general, but had exerted his 
best endeavors to sustain them all. That he had 
never introduced or encouraged in the cabinet any 
test question concerning men or measures; had 
never seen any intemperance of debate there ; nor 
had one word of unkindness or distrust ever passed 
between the President or any of his official advisers 
and himself." 

This interview shows not only that the charges 
against Seward, which came to a head in Decem- 
ber of this same year in the action of a caucus of 
senators requesting his removal, were in July the 
gossip of Washington, but also that they were 
perfectly well known to him at that time, and that 
he understood their object ; for he went on to say 
that he was "content to remain where he was so 
long as the war continued and the President re- 
quired it; but would not prolong his stay one hour 
beyond the time when the President should think 
it wise to relieve " him. 



CABINET DIFFICULTIES 329 

It was to Seward a summer of intense anxiety. 
Continued defeats were likely to bring on a recog- 
nition of the independence of the Southern Con- 
federacy, which must be either acquiesced in or 
met by war. To avert the defeats, "what could 
we do but to push recruiting, and, that failing, to 
provide for a draft?" "I go to Congress and im- 
plore and conjure them," he writes to his wife. 
"They give me debates upon the errors of the 
past, and quarrels about who is to blame. These 
disputes involve policies about dealing with slaves, 
upon which Congress angers itself and the country ; 
and the governors of the States write, ' You can 
get no recruits.' I ask Congress to authorize a 
draft. They fall into altercation about letting 
slaves fight and work. Every day is a day lost, 
and every day lost is a hazard to the country." 
The letter shows that his relations with Congress 
were at this time not altogether harmonious. A 
dispatch of the same month to Mr. Adams gives 
us a further insight into his state of mind : — 

"It seems as if the extreme advocates of Afri- 
can slavery and its most vehement opponents were 
acting in concert together to precipitate a servile 
war, — the former by making the most desperate 
attempt to overthrow the federal Union, the latter 
by demanding an edict of universal emancipation 
as a lawful and necessary, if not, as they say, the 
only legitimate way of saving the Union." 

As an official dispatch, this communication was 
unwise, if not unjustifiable, and was not helped 



330 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

by the word "confidential" at the top. It was 
really no dispatch, but a private, personal letter, 
expressing strongly a feeling then quite prevalent 
in parts of the country, which Seward might fairly 
enough have held, and which he had a perfect 
right to communicate in private correspondence to 
a friend. His own object at this time was to se- 
cure, as soon as possible, a victory which should 
be to Europe a demonstration of the certainty of 
our ultimate success. For this troops were needed, 
and every day occupied by Congress in discussing 
political problems, instead of taking measures to 
fill up our armies, was, to his mind, a day lost to 
us. He knew that each day so lost increased the 
chances of foreign intervention. He thought that 
the questions as to slavery might wait, but that 
our successes could not do so ; and he was impa- 
tient of anything which might endanger or delay 
them. Before the meeting of Congress this dis- 
patch had become public. Mr. Lincoln said that 
it had not been submitted to him. It made no 
reference whatever to either the House or Senate, 
and no allusion to Congress. Seward spoke of 
"the extreme advocates of slavery" and of "its 
most vehement opponents." These terms described 
classes, not Congressmen ; nevertheless the radical 
anti-slavery senators and representatives were in- 
dignant at what they chose to consider an affront 
offered them by a cabinet minister in an official 
document written without the knowledge of the 
President. 



CABINET DIFFICULTIES 331 

When the session began in December, every one 
was depressed about the military situation, and the 
Republicans very sore at the results of the Novem- 
ber elections. The administration had lost every- 
where. New York, Seward's own State, had 
elected as governor a peace Democrat; and had 
the new Congress met at once, some peace would 
probably have been patched up, either with or 
without foreign intervention. The change in the 
popular vote was to be attributed largely to the 
failure of our military operations at the East. 
There was a general feeling that the administra- 
tion was mainly responsible for this, by its inter- 
ference with, and mismanagement of, the conduct 
of the war. Some thought that our misfortunes 
were owing to the fact that the government had 
intrusted important commands to officers who had 
not decided anti-slavery opinions, and were not, 
therefore, it was charged, thoroughly in earnest 
in their work. It was evident that the emancipa- 
tion proclamation, which is presently to be spoken 
of, had further divided, instead of uniting the 
people. The nation had given a distinct vote of 
want of confidence; and the Republican senators 
wished to regain the popular favor. They as- 
sumed that Seward had been the controlling mind 
in the administration, the premier, in the talk of 
the day; that he was practically responsible for 
its domestic as well as its foreign policy, for all 
its mistakes and misfortunes, civil, political, and 
military, and had dominated, in a heterogeneous 



332 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

and discordant cabinet, even the President him- 
self. 

It is idle to speculate upon the origin or causes 
of this opinion. It is enough that it existed at 
the time, and was not confined to Congress. It is 
not easy to find any foundation for it. From the 
time that supplies were ordered to Sumter to the 
close of his life, Lincoln was the head of his own 
government, and Seward recognized this fact. 
"There is but one vote in the cabinet," he said, 
"and that is cast by the President." "The Pre- 
sident is the best of us all," he wrote to his wife in 
June, 1861. Lincoln listened to Seward's opin- 
ions, as he did to those of the other members of 
his cabinet, but the decision was always his own; 
if anybody interfered with the military operations 
and the disposition of the troops, it was the Pre- 
sident and secretary of war, not Seward. 

It was thought, however, that some change must 
be made ; and acting on their preconceived notions, 
a caucus of Republican senators voted by a small 
majority to request the President "to dispense 
with the services of the secretary of state." Be- 
lieving that their object might be equally well at- 
tained by a resolve less personal, supported by a 
larger majority, the caucus on the following day 
adopted, with only one dissenting voice, a substi- 
tute, recommending the President to partially re- 
model his cabinet, and appointed a committee of 
nine, — six radicals and three conservatives, — to 
wait on him and present this resolution. That 



CABINET DIFFICULTIES 333 

there might he no doubt as to the object of the 
resolve, eight of these nine committeemen were 
known to think "Seward a serious obstacle to the 
prosecution of the war." Seward, learning of the 
doings of the caucus, anticipated the action of the 
committee by sending in his resignation. Chase 
disapproved the action of the caucus ; he was un- 
willing to be a party to an attack upon Seward, 
and finding the reason given by the senators for 
their action broad enough to extend to all the 
members of the cabinet, he also sent in his resig- 
nation. The whole thing disturbed Lincoln; he 
was displeased with the attempt at congressional 
dictation, and greatly annoyed at the inability to 
grasp the situation which the proceeding disj)layed. 
Seward and Chase represented the opposite ex- 
tremes of the Republican party, and it was neces- 
sary that he should have in his cabinet the support 
of both. He was relieved from all embarrassment 
on that score when he received Chase's resignation, 
and, one might almost say, ordered them both to 
go back at once to their posts, because the public 
good required it. Speaking of the matter a year 
later, he said: "If I had yielded to that storm 
and dismissed Seward, the thing would have 
slumped over one way, and we should have been 
left to a scanty handful of supporters." 

As our armies advanced into the seceding States, 
the questions of the effect of the war upon the 
slaves found within our lines, as well as upon 
slavery itself, became of constantly increasing in- 



334 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

terest and importance. General Butler's ingen- 
ious application of the term "contraband" to the 
slaves coming within our lines, was of great ser- 
vice in solving the former; but the latter, the 
vital question of slavery or emancipation, still 
remained, and upon this there were great differ- 
ences of opinion. There were many persons, not 
necessarily radicals, who, looking at the matter 
only from a moral point of view, considered con- 
stitutional scruples wholly idle, that if slavery 
were not abolished the war would be not merely a 
crime but a blunder, and that public proclamation 
of immediate emancipation should be made at once, 
without regard to consequences, and however inef- 
fectual it might in fact be. Our foreign ministers 
— while they thought military successes essential, 
if we would prevent the recognition of the South 
by the governments of Europe — admitted that a 
proclamation of emancipation, which should give 
to the war the aspect of a crusade against slavery, 
might be of advantage to us; and some of them 
were urgent that this proclamation should be made 
at once. 

At home those persons who believed in the su- 
premacy of the Constitution, and that the mainte- 
nance of the Union was the object of the war and 
its only justification, were in a state of great doubt 
both as to the duty and the powers of the federal 
government. Many of them, as the war went 
on, had come gradually to the conviction that it 
must end in the abolition of slavery, and that the 



CABINET DIFFICULTIES 335 

struggle would be futile or worse if in the result 
this cause for sectional strife should not disappear 
forever; yet they saw no ground for the govern- 
ment's interference with slavery in any State, ex- 
cept as a military necessity for the purpose of more 
quickly and successfully putting down the rebellion. 
They were very doubtful whether an emancipation 
proclamation would have this effect, — whether it 
would not more strongly unite and give fresh cour- 
age to the South, while it would bring into oppo- 
sition to the government all those elements at the 
North which, united in their support of a war for 
the Constitution, were more or less indifferent to 
slavery ; and whether it would not, by thus divid- 
ing the Northern people, make the successful pro- 
secution of the war no longer possible; or in other 
words, whether it would not add an enemy in the 
rear to those already in the field. 

His own doubts upon this point, and his convic- 
tion that he had no right to convert the war into 
a crusade against slavery, had made the President 
hesitate long. As he declared in words often 
quoted: "My paramount object in this struggle is 
to save the Union, and is not either to save or to 
destroy slavery. If I could save the Union with- 
out freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I 
could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do 
it; and if I could save it by freeing some and 
leaving others alone, I would also do that. What 
I do about slavery and the colored race, I do be- 
cause I believe it helps to save the Union; and 



336 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe 
it would help to save the Union. I shall do less 
whenever I shall believe that what I am doing 
hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I 
shall believe doing more will help the cause." 

More than a month, however, before he wrote 
this letter, he had submitted to his cabinet the 
draft of an emancipation proclamation. The dis- 
cussion which followed showed that there was be- 
tween the secretaries the same difference of opinion 
that existed among the people. The attorney- 
general and Stanton favored the immediate issuing 
of this proclamation; the secretary of the navy 
was silent; Mr. Chase said it was a measure of 
great danger, would lead to universal emancipa- 
tion, and went far beyond anything he had recom- 
mended; and Mr. Blair prophesied that it would 
cost the administration the next elections. No- 
thing was said, however, that affected the Presi- 
dent's decision, until Seward suggested that the 
depression of the public mind, in consequence of 
our repeated reverses, was so great that this might 
be considered the last resource of an exhausted gov- 
ernment, a cry for help, the government stretching 
forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia 
stretching forth her hands to the government ; and 
that the proclamation had better be postponed 
until it could be supported by military successes, 
instead of coming upon the heel of great disasters. 
The wisdom of this struck Mr. Lincoln so forcibly 
that he put the paper away, and waited till our 



EMANCIPATION 337 

partial victory at Antietam had, to some extent, 
redeemed the failures of the summer. The procla- 
mation was then issued; and when the days of 
grace which it gave to the seceding slaveholders 
had expired, its assurances were fulfilled. As our 
armies advanced, the government in all its branches 
recognized and maintained the freedom which the 
proclamation promised, and the interests of hu- 
manity became identified • with the cause of the 
country. 



CHAPTER XX 

DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 

When Lincoln entered upon the duties of his 
office the troops at his command were too few to 
permit him even to consider the question of pro- 
perly reinforcing and holding Fort Sumter. Our 
navy consisted of forty -two ships fit for immediate 
service, thirty of which were dispersed in different 
parts of the world, leaving only twelve for use at 
home. To suppress the rebellion took us four 
years. At its close we had an army of a million 
men, and a navy of nearly six hundred ships, 
seventy-five of which were ironclads. It was, of 
course, impossible that a contest of this magnitude, 
as to which the great Euroj^ean powers had pro- 
claimed their neutrality almost before it began, 
could be carried on by sea and land for so long 
a period without giving rise to an infinite number 
and variety of diplomatic questions and complaints. 
The published correspondence of the State Depart- 
ment for this period fills thirteen volumes; the 
mere enumeration of the matters treated of would 
be extremely tedious. It may be said in general, 
that Seward claimed for us as belligerents the 
fullest exercise of all the rights upon which Great 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 339 

Britain had insisted when at war; but that, with- 
out waiving these, he at times made concessions 
for the purpose of relieving the tension between 
this country and the leading European powers, 
and of diminishing if possible the hostile feelings 
of their citizens. His mode of dealing with the 
mails found on captured blockade runners is an 
illustration of this. 

These vessels often had mails on board; the 
question of the disposition to be made of these was 
important and troublesome, and involved a good 
deal of feeling. Should we open them and exam- 
ine their contents? They might contain official 
dispatches or private letters having important in- 
formation ; but, to ascertain this, it would be ne- 
cessary to pry into domestic letters of a strictly 
personal character. Was this permitted by the 
laws of war? The governments under whose flags 
these vessels sailed insisted that the mail baers 
should be forwarded unopened to their destina- 
tion; our Navy Department contended that they 
were liable like the cargo to examination for con- 
traband. Seward, after some consideration, agreed 
that the public mails of any friendly or neutral 
power should be forwarded unopened. The secre- 
tary of the navy thought this a weak yielding to 
an unreasonable demand. Seward made the con- 
cession not as a matter of right, but of expediency, 
and was unquestionably wise in so doing. In any 
event the advantages to us would have been slight 
and rare; the irritation of other governments and 



340 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

of their citizens, whose private correspondence 
might have been tampered with, would have been 
constant and extreme, and might have led to most 
serious consequences. 

The permission granted, at the request of their 
government, to the French, who wished to do so, 
to leave New Orleans by passing through the 
blockade is another instance of the same policy. 
The abuse of a similar privilege by a British con- 
sul and the commander of an English man-of-war, 
which had been authorized for a special purpose 
to enter a blockaded port, shows the extent to 
which their sympathy with the South could carry 
two British public servants. They permitted the 
Confederate government to ship and send to Eng- 
land by this vessel gold for the payment of its 
obligations there, that it might in this way escape 
any risk of capture. When Seward remonstrated, 
the consul was dismissed from the service ; but the 
mischief had been already done. 

The blockade gave rise to many complaints, 
most of them depending on questions of fact, as 
to which it was not always easy to ascertain the 
truth. Though the investigation of these cases 
occupied a great deal of time, they hardly fur- 
nished any cause for serious anxiety; but our 
attempt in the autumn of 1861 to obstruct some 
of the channels of Charleston harbor by sinking 
old hulks loaded with stones — the stone blockade, 
as it was called — seemed at one moment to threaten 
difficulties of a graver character. Similar modes 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 341 

of closing the entrance to a harbor, by quasi-per- 
manent obstructions, were not wholly unknown. 
The British in the war of the Revolution had done 
something of the sort at Savannah; the Confeder- 
ates during their four years' struggle placed such 
obstructions in many harbors. But on learning 
of our stone blockade Earl Russell's temper seems 
to have got the better of his courtesy. He in- 
structed Lord Lyons to remonstrate with Mr. 
Seward against this as a "cruel plan, which could 
only be adopted as a measure of revenge and of 
irremediable injury against an enemy;" and to 
say further that, "even as a scheme of bitterest 
and sanguinary war, such a measure would not be 
justifiable; that it would be a plot against the 
commerce of all maritime nations and against the 
free intercourse of the Southern States of America 
with the civilized world." ^ How far Lord Lyons 
in his interview with Mr. Seward softened the 
offensive phraseology of this letter cannot be 
known. Mr. Seward's position in the matter, 
according to Lord Lyons 's report to his govern- 
ment, is exactly what he himself stated it to be in 
a dispatch of February 17, 1861, to Mr. Adams, 
in which he said : " I am not prepared to recognize 
the right of other nations to object to the manner 
of placing artificial obstructions in the channels of 

^ Lord Russell had probably forgotten that a provision of the 
treaty of Utrecht (1713) inserted in favor of England stipulated 
for the filling up of the harbor of Dunkirk, and that thi3 waa 
done soon after the execution of the treaty. 



342 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

rivers leading to ports which have been seized by 
insurgents in their attempts to overthrow this gov- 
ernment. I am nevertheless desirous that the ex- 
aggerations on that subject which have been in- 
dulged abroad may be corrected." He adds that 
he has applied to the Navy Department for infor- 
mation, and has learned that there are two ship 
channels in which no artificial obstructions have 
been or are to be placed, and which are guarded 
only by the blockading squadron. Nothing fur- 
ther was heard from Great Britain on the subject. 
The sunken hulks were gradually washed away by 
storms, and the necessity for the discussion disap- 
peared with the obstructions. 

The personal questions as to foreigners were 
not confined to matters having their origin in our 
blockade. There were numerous complaints of 
unjust imprisonment or of hard usage as to their 
persons or projDerty by resident foreigners of vari- 
ous nationalities. Care and patience were requi- 
site for the examination of these, and tact and 
good sense for deciding them; but they were all 
disposed of without hard feeling, except those 
arising out of General Butler's government at 
New Orleans. The foreign population there, of 
which a majority was French, had strong seces- 
sion sympathies, and was not disposed to submit 
quietly to Butler's arbitrary proceedings. Com- 
plaints from the foreign ministers came thick and 
fast ; some were of a very serious nature, involving 
claims for large amounts of property confiscated, 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 343 

of money seized, without apparent justification, 
together with demands for indemnity for personal 
insults and injuries. They engrossed half Sew- 
ard's time, and were seriously endangering our 
friendly relations with the great powers of Europe, 
until, "to relieve their uneasiness," Banks was 
sent to succeed Butler. Butler's proceedings were 
gratifying to the vindictive feelings of the North 
towards the secessionists, and at the time were 
much approved. They may have been necessary 
for the maintenance of public order ; if they were 
not so, it was certainly injudicious to run such 
risks of a rupture with France, which would prob- 
ably have involved one with England also. It is 
not impossible that the action of the State Depart- 
ment on some of these complaints of the foreigners 
at New Orleans may have been the alleged "inter- 
ference with our generals," which was urged as 
one of the reasons for asking Seward's removal. 

There is a wide difference between a proclama- 
tion of neutrality in the case of a war between two 
states already recognized as belonging to the fam- 
ily of nations, and a similar proclamation in a case 
where bands of insurgents, or provinces in revolt, 
are seeking to wrest their independence from their 
government. In the former case the proclamation 
makes no change in the existing status, it is a 
mere cautionary notice of undisputed facts, which 
are thus called to the attention of the subjects of 
the government issuing it, to remind them of their 



344 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

rights and duties. In the latter it alters the pre- 
vious conditions, and, so far as the citizens of the 
country issuing it are concerned, actually creates 
what it only professes to recognize, either calling 
into being as a full-grown nation (if it acknow- 
ledges their independence) a body of people who 
had previously no political existence whatever, or 
turning a rebellion into a war, if it only calls them 
belligerents. It is really not a declaration of neu- 
trality, but a mild form of intervention on behalf 
of an incipient revolution, and when made jointly 
by several powerful nations at the same time, is a 
pretty efficacious one; it is also distinctly an act 
injurious to the government endeavoring to put 
down its rebellious citizens. The only way for 
any foreign nation to maintain a real neutrality 
in such a struggle is to leave the rebels alone 
to gain their independence if they can, and their 
government undisturbed to crush the insurrection 
if it is able. It was not this absolute neutrality 
which England and France assumed to maintain 
towards us during the rebellion. Their proclama- 
tions at the outset gave countenance to the South, 
and the hope of something more. 

Our complaints of these proclamations at the 
time they were issued have already been spoken 
of. It soon appeared that, so far as England 
was concerned, the immediate and principal effect 
of her course was to stimulate all her industries 
and manufactures, and to encourage her people to 
do their utmost to supply the needs of our States 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 345 

in rebellion, whose only resources were agricul- 
tural, whose main dependence for everything es- 
sential to carrying on their struggle was the work- 
shops and factories of Great Britain, and who, 
without the suj^plies received in this way, would 
have been speedily subdued. The perception of 
these facts quickened and intensified our sense of 
the wrong done us by England at the outset; it 
gave rise to a general conviction that the British 
government was not reluctant to gain advantages 
for its own citizens at our expense, and was the 
source of a widespread belief that to secure this 
result had been the purpose of its original action. 

We also complained that England persistently 
violated in various ways the duties and obligations 
of the neutrality she had declared. We charged 
her with doing so by permitting the Confederates 
to use, first Nassau in the British Bahamas, and 
later Bermuda, as military bases, and depots for 
their arms, ammunition, stores, and equipments. 
Against this use of these ports Seward protested 
strenuously; but his remonstrances produced no 
effect. If England had made no proclamation of 
neutrality, such assistance to unrecognized rebels 
would not have been tolerated; but under the 
circumstances it is doubtful if it was a technical 
breach of neutrality, though if it had clearly been 
so, it could not have done us more grievous harm. 

Our complaints against England's violations of 
neutrality, however, went far beyond this. We 
charged her with gross breaches of it in permitting 



346 WILLIAM HENRY SEWAED 

rebel cruisers, intended to prey upon our com- 
merce, to be built in her ship -yards, equipped 
and armed from her workshops, provisioned and 
manned by her sailors and subjects. Early in 
1862, complaint was made to the British govern- 
ment as to the construction of a vessel for this 
purpose. She was finished, registered as an Eng- 
lish ship, and cleared as svich for Palermo. She 
never went there, but appeared at Bermuda, even- 
tually ran the blockade into Mobile, where she was 
armed, successfully escaped from there, and cruised 
as the Florida. She made many prizes in the 
Atlantic, and having burnt one of our ships off 
the Irish coast, went in to Brest to land its crew 
and make some repairs, and, in spite of our re- 
monstrances, was there allowed to ship a fresh 
crew for herself and start again. She ended her 
career in October, 1864, at Bahia. She was cut 
out from under the gims of a Brazilian battery 
and the broadside of a guard-shij), by the United 
States steamer Wachusett, and brought into Hamp- 
ton Roads, where she fortunately solved a diplo- 
matic difficidty by springing a leak and sinking. 
Brazil accepted our apology for the violation of 
her sovereignty in the attack on the rebel ship, 
and the removal of our consul who had advised it, 
with the sending of the commander of the Wachu- 
sett before a court-martial, as sufficient amends 
for the offense. 

-Towards the end of June in the same year 
(1862), Mr. Adams informed Lord Eussell that 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 347 

a new and more powerful steamer was nearly 
ready to leave Liverpool on the same errand as 
the Florida. She did not in fact sail until the 
29th of July, but the British government was not 
able during this whole month to satisfy itself, until 
it was too late, that there was any evidence which 
would justify her detention. This vessel was the 
Alabama. She slipped out of port and waited off 
the coast until she had received a crew of forty 
men sent to her in a tug from Liverpool ; off the 
Azores she was met by two vessels, which had 
sailed directly from England, bringing all her 
armament, clothing for her crew, a supply of coal, 
and her captain and officers. As British ships 
are British territory, it seems that in this case 
the vessel was built, equipped, armed, and manned 
under the British flag and protection; and that 
the breach of neutrality and the violation of the 
spirit, if not of the letter, of the municipal law of 
England were complete in every particular before 
she hoisted the Confederate colors. It has been 
admitted by a British jurist, that "had the whole 
series of transactions which finally placed her on 
the ocean armed, manned, provisioned, and com- 
missioned for war, been within the knowledge of 
the British government, and within its power of 
control, she would never have left the Mersey;" 
and, if it be conceded that the display of the Con- 
federate flag and the exhibition of a Confederate 
commission, under the circumstances stated, so 
changed her character that she could no longer 



348 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

be proceeded against and condemned in any Brit- 
ish court, it may fairly be claimed that a due regard 
to the neutrality they professed, to the dignity of 
the crown, and to the spirit of their laws would 
have more than justified the British ministry in 
refusing to this vessel, English in everything but 
the name, an asylum in any harbor under their 
jurisdiction. Instead of this she was received at 
every British port she chose to visit, and met there 
a liberal hospitality quite different from the bare 
toleration which was grudgingly given to our men- 
of-war. She began her predatory cruising in Au- 
gust, 1862, and finished it twenty-two months later, 
in June, 1864, when she was sunk off Cherbourg 
by the United States steamer Kearsarge after an 
hour's action. During her cruises she cajjtured 
and destroyed about sixty American vessels, most 
of which were merchantmen employed in foreign 
voyages. 

Applications to the ministry having proved inef- 
fectual to prevent the sailing of the rebel cruisers, 
Seward wrote to Mr. Adams: "As one more re- 
source, it is deemed advisable that an effort be 
made to secure the enforcement of the enlistment 
laws through the action of the courts " (April 2, 
1863). In pursuance of these instructions Mr, 
Adams furnished the British government with such 
evidence that proceedings were begun against the 
owners of the steamer Alexandra. At the trial 
there was no dispute about the facts. The vessel 
was built under a contract with the agent of the 



Alabama and Keai'sarge 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 349 

Confederate government and was intended for use 
as a man-of-war. She was not finished at the time 
the proceedings were begun; and the jury were 
instructed that, to bring the case within the provi- 
sions of the foreign enlistment act, her equipment 
must have been so far completed in British terri- 
tory that she was capable of hostile operations; or 
that, if it were not already so complete, it must be 
proved that it was intended that it should be com- 
pleted in British territory. They were also told 
that, although the vessel had been built and was 
to be used as a cruiser, if it was intended to put 
the arms on board at a place beyond British juris- 
diction there would be no violation of the foreign 
enlistment act. Upon these instructions the jury 
found for the defendants. The subsequent action 
of the judge who presided at the trial was such as, 
under the English forms of procedure, precluded 
any final, authoritative decision as to the construc- 
tion of the statute. The case left the Confeder- 
ates at liberty to violate without substantial incon- 
venience the spirit of international law, and to 
evade both the letter and spirit of the municipal 
statutes. 

The gravity of the situation was at once appre- 
ciated here, and Seward wrote to Mr. Adams that, 
if the law of this case was to regulate the action 
of Her Majesty's government, the United States 
would be without any guarantee against the un- 
limited employment of capital by British subjects 
in building and sending forth ships of war from 



350 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

British ports to make war against the United 
States, and that this would be, in effect, "a war 
waged against this country by a portion at least 
of the British nation, and tolerated, though not 
declared, by the British government." He sug- 
gested to the English ministry, whether Parlia- 
ment would "not consider it just and expedient 
to amend the existing statute in such a way as to 
effect what the two governments actually believed 
it ought to accomplish;" and he added, that if 
Her Majesty's government should desire such a 
proceeding, the President would not hesitate to 
apply to Congress for an equivalent amendment of 
the laws of the United States. Mr. Adams made 
the suggestion, and Earl Russell expressed his 
willingness to propose amendments, on condition 
that they should also be adopted in the American 
act; but when Mr. Adams informed him later of 
the assent of our government to this proposal, 
he was told that Her Majesty's government had 
reconsidered the matter and declined to suggest 
any amendments. This closed the negotiations; 
the act remained unchanged till the end of the 
rebellion. 

The English government, however, became more 
ready to exert themselves to prevent the construc- 
tion and sailing of Confederate cruisers. Two 
rams that were building in Liverpool, under the 
supervision of the officer in charge of the Con- 
federate naval bureau of construction there, were 
seized and detained, and were finally bought by 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 351 

the crown. The only vessel of importance which 
subsequently got away was the Shenandoah, whose 
depredations were continued long after the South- 
ern armies had surrendered and peace had been 
restored. In October, 1864, when Sherman had 
already taken Atlanta, Farragut had captured 
Mobile, and the fall of the Confederacy was evi- 
dently a mere question of months, she left London 
as the Sea King. Off a little island near Madeira 
she met by appointment another steamer direct 
from Liverpool, from which she received her arms, 
ammunition, and stores; she raised the Confeder- 
ate flag and started on her cruise as the Shenan- 
doah. In January, 1865, she put in at Melbourne, 
filled up her crew, and proceeded to the Arctic 
Ocean, where she destroyed the American whaling 
fleet, continuing her depredations until she learned 
in August from an English ship that the Confed- 
eracy had ceased to exist. Returning to Liver- 
pool, she was taken possession of by the crown, 
and was subsequently delivered to the government 
of the United States. 

All these vessels, not only those that have been 
mentioned, but others that have not been named, 
though called Confederate cruisers, were built to 
overhaul, plunder, and destroy unarmed merchant- 
men, but, as the captain of one of them frankly 
admitted, not to fight, "unless in a very urgent 
case." Their operations occasioned an enormous 
amount of diplomatic correspondence and negotia- 
tion, which lasted after Seward ceased to be secre- 



352 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

tary of state. So long as Mr. Adams remained In 
England it was conducted by him, upon general 
lines laid down by Seward, but with the largest 
discretion given to Mr. Adams. For a time each 
new vessel destroyed was made the subject of a 
fresh complaint, until this constant repetition of 
similar demands drew from Lord Russell the im- 
patient declaration, "that he wished to say once 
for all, that Her Majesty's government disclaimed 
any responsibility for these losses, and hoped they 
had made their position perfectly clear." Never- 
theless a subsequent ministry expressed Her Majes- 
ty's regret for the escape of these vessels from 
British ports and for the depredations committed 
by them, agreed to submit to arbitration the ques- 
tion of Great Britain's liability for these, and 
consented that the arbitrators should accept as the 
law which should govern their decision the rules : 
that a neutral power is bound to use due dili- 
gence to prevent the fitting out, arming, or equip- 
ping within its jurisdiction of any vessel which it 
has reasonable grounds to believe is intended to 
cruise or carry on war against any power with 
which it is at peace; that it is bound in the same 
way to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction 
of any such vessel which has been either wholly or 
partly fitted there for such warlike use; that it 
cannot permit a belligerent to use its ports or 
waters as a base of naval operations against his 
enemy, or for the purpose of renewing or increasing 
his arms or other military supplies, or of enlisting 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 353 

men; and lastly, that it must exercise due dili- 
gence as to all persons and places within its juris- 
diction to prevent the violation of these obliga- 
tions. By the award of the arbitrators to whom 
was submitted the question of Great Britain's lia- 
bility under these rules for the acts of the Confed- 
erate cruisers, she was compelled to pay fifteen 
million five hundred thousand dollars (115,500,000) 
for property actually destroyed by them. This 
sum was intended as a compensation to American 
shipowners and citizens for the loss of their pro- 
perty; but for the heaviest loss to the country, and 
one from which it has never recovered, that of its 
share in the carrying trade of the world, no com- 
pensation was made. It was this trade to which 
Mr. Adams referred when he wrote to Mr. Seward 
early in the war, that "the English people would 
be gratified at anything which would inflict an 
injury on American commerce, of which they are 
very jealous." 

The building and depredations of the Alabama 
and her sister ships were not, however, the only 
matters of diplomatic correspondence and com- 
plaint as to these cruisers. Their reception in 
foreign ports, the right of coaling, and other privi- 
leges accorded them there, and the courtesies al- 
leged to have been shown to their officers, but 
refused to ours, were the subject of constant remon- 
strances from the State Department; and though 
some of these matters might seem trifling, and the 
complaints unavailing, Mr. Seward's repeated criti- 



354 WILLIAM HENRY SEWAKD 

cisms served to make the colonial governors of the 
various European powers more cautious about over- 
stepping the bounds of neutrality, and to lessen 
the instances in which they actually did so. On 
the other hand, it was charged that our naval offi- 
cers pursued blockade runners into neutral waters, 
lay in wait for Confederate cruisers in foreign 
harbors, and often failed to observe the courtesies 
expected from ships of war in friendly ports ; and 
every such complaint required to be investigated, 
and explained or answered, or an apology made 
whenever there was shown to be just ground of 
offense. 

There were also other matters as to which we 
considered that Great Britain gave us good cause 
of complaint. 

Towards the close of the war, in October, 1864, 
a few men, coming as ordinary travelers from 
Canada to St. Albans, Vermont, were met there 
by others arriving from Chicago ; the two bands, 
having joined forces, attempted unsuccessfully to 
set the town on fire; they robbed the banks of 
their specie and then crossed the frontier into Can- 
ada, where several of them were arrested. Seward 
endeavored in vain to obtain their extradition as 
criminals. British writers have admitted that, 
had they been caught in Vermont, they would have 
had no claim to be treated as military prisoners ; 
but the Canadian court refused to surrender them, 
on the ground that what they had done was not a 
crime, but an act of war. Somewhat similar occur- 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 355 

rences took place on board steamers on the lakes 
or on coastwise voyages on the Atlantic. When 
parties of apparently innocent passengers threw 
off their disguise and seized and plundered the 
steamers on which they had embarked, their sur- 
render was refused on similar grounds, the court 
saying : either this is an act of piracy on the high 
seas, in which case the men can be tried here; or 
of war, in which case they cannot be tried any- 
where. 

It is certainly not for the interests of civiliza- 
tion that acts of this character, done by bands of 
desperadoes for their private gain and without 
authority, should be treated as acts of war by a 
neutral. It is doubtful whether any one con- 
nected with any of these expeditions held any regu- 
lar commission from the Confederate authorities; 
it is quite certain that no one of the men was at 
the time a soldier in the Confederate service, and 
there was no evidence that any of the expeditions 
were in pursuance of the orders of the Confederate 
government or of any of its agents. They were 
the work of marauders. The Canadian govern- 
ment was so ashamed of the conduct of its judi- 
ciary that it refunded the gold value of the paper 
money stolen at St. Albans, which by order of 
court had been given back to the thieves, from 
whose possession it had been taken by the police. 

Aside from the diplomatic difficulties directly 
connected with the rebellion, the state of affairs 



356 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

in Mexico was a source of great anxiety during 
Lincoln's administration. We were not only un- 
easy as to the temporary efiPect which the trou- 
bles there might have upon our foreign relations, 
but we were also apprehensive lest they should 
have a serious influence uj3on the future of our 
country. 

Mexico in 1861 was indebted to citizens of 
France, England, and Spain, who complained that 
they could not obtain payment of the money due 
them. The governments of these three countries, 
realizing that our domestic difficulties were their 
opportunity, made an alliance in the autumn of 
that year, the purpose of which was, not merely 
to enforce the payment of these debts, but also to 
secure a better protection for foreigners resident in 
Mexico. A month after the treaty was executed 
we were invited to join in it. Seward declined 
the invitation. He suggested that we might guar- 
antee the Mexican debt, and that in this way the 
necessity for foreign intervention would be avoided. 
This suggestion was not accepted ; it was said that 
it would leave untouched one of the objects of the 
alliance, — security for the future good treatment 
of foreigners living in Mexico. The original scheme 
of the three powers evidently contemplated a tem- 
porary and limited occupation of the territory, if 
nothing more. In declining to become a party to 
the treaty, Seward stated our strong interest that no 
foreign power should acquire territory in Mexico, 
or gain any peculiar advantage there, or exercise 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 357 

any influence to interfere with the free choice by 
the Mexicans of their own form of government. 

It soon became evident that Louis Napoleon had 
aims quite different from those of the other powers, 
and early in April, 1862, the Spanish and English 
commissioners, finding that the French were giving 
military aid to the monarchical party, withdrew 
from cooperation with them, and the alliance was 
dissolved. Mexico at this time was divided be- 
tween the church party, which was monarchist 
and conservative, and the liberal party, which was 
republican. The actual government was republi- 
can and liberal, but it was weak and unstable. 
Napoleon's plan was to use his power and influence 
in favor of the monarchists, and to obtain, at an 
election to be held under the auspices and the con- 
trol of the French troops, a plebiscite creating a 
monarchy and calling a foreign prince to the throne. 
He knew that it was the settled policy of this coun- 
try not to permit the establishment by a Euro- 
pean power of any monarchy in America, and that, 
if our condition permitted it, we should interfere, 
by force if need be, to prevent it. But our hands 
were tied, and he took advantage of our necessities 
to attempt to carry out his project. Before the 
departure of the first expedition for Mexico, ru- 
mors that this was the emperor's scheme were rife 
in Europe ; but the French ministers in conversa- 
tions, apparently frank, with our representatives, 
and in their diplomatic correspondence, not only 
at that time but during the whole French occupa- 



358 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

tion of Mexico, persistently denied that there was 
any foundation for these reports, or that the em- 
peror had any purpose of forcing a government 
upon that country. Though it was difficult to 
reconcile these statements with the reports of the 
English and Spanish commissioners, Seward in 
his correspondence accepted them as true, and in- 
structed our minister to say that we relied on them 
as such; and that while we recognized the right 
of France to make war against Mexico, and to de- 
termine for herself the cause, we had "a right and 
interest to insist that she should not improve the 
war to raise up in Mexico an anti-republican or 
an anti-American government, or to maintain such 
a government there." 

An assembly of notables, convened July 10, 
1863, by direction of the French general, voted 
to establish an imperial government and elected 
the Archduke Maximilian of Austria to the throne. 
In a dispatch of September 26, 1863, Seward 
stated with great distinctness the views of our 
government upon this matter. He said that the 
United States had neither a right nor a disposition 
to intervene by force in the internal affairs of 
Mexico, either to maintain a republic or to over- 
throw an imperial government, if Mexico chose to 
establish the one or the other; but that our gov- 
ernment knew that the inherent normal opinion of 
Mexico favored a republican and domestic govern- 
ment in preference to any monarchy imposed from 
abroad, and that if France should determine to 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 359 

adopt in Mexico a policy adverse to these views, 
it would probably scatter seeds which might ulti- 
mately "ripen into collision between France and 
the United States and other American republics." 
It was intimated to Seward that the early acknow- 
ledgment of Maximilian's government by this coun- 
try would tend to shorten, or perhaps to end, the 
French occupation of Mexico. To this intimation 
he replied that the French government had been 
already informed that in the opinion of the United 
States the permanent establishment of a foreign 
and monarchical government in Mexico would be 
found neither easy nor desirable ; that this opin- 
ion remained unchanged; and that, so long as 
the United States continued to regard Mexico as the 
theatre of a war, which had not yet ended in the 
subversion of the existing republican government 
with which this country remained in relations of 
peace and friendship, we were not at liberty to 
consider the question of recognizing a government 
which, in the further chances of war, might come 
into its place. 

In all his diplomatic correspondence after the 
recognition of the Confederates as belligerents by 
Great Britain, Seward was hampered by a sense 
of the possibility of a combination between one or 
more of the great maritime powers with the insur- 
gents, and an apprehension of the probable effect 
of such a combination upon our contest for the 
preservation of the Union; and his efforts were 
directed to preserving peace with all other nations 



360 WILLIMI HENRY SEWARD 

without impairing the dignity of his own country. 
He had stated with entire frankness, and with 
unmistakable distinctness, though in courteous lan- 
guage, our position as to the French intervention 
in Mexico, yet had been careful to avoid using any 
expressions which could be construed into a threat, 
or give France an opportunity for breaking with 
us. The members of the legislative department 
of the government were not so wise. Resolutions 
upon this subject were introduced into both the 
House and Senate in the winter of 1864. In the 
Senate they were laid on the table on the motion 
of Sumner, who said that if they meant anything, 
if they were not mere words, they meant war. 
The House, however, voted that they were imwill- 
ing by silence to "leave the world under the im- 
pression that they were indifferent spectators of 
the deplorable events transpiring in the republic 
of Mexico, and thought fit to declare that it did 
not accord with the policy of the United States to 
acknowledge any monarchy erected in America 
upon the ruins of any republic, under the auspices 
of any European power." 

This action naturally excited the French govern- 
ment, and brought from it the direct inquiry to our 
minister, "Do you mean peace or war? " AVhen 
this question was put to him he had heard nothing 
from home, and could only answer that the terms 
of the resolution were opposed to the instructions 
contained in his dispatches. The French gov- 
ernment, however, considered the resolves as a 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 361 

serious matter, and the secessionists in Paris were 
jubilant until some days later a dispatch was re- 
ceived, in which Seward said, that the question of 
the recognition of a monarchy in Mexico was a 
purely executive one, the decision of which constitu- 
tionally belonged " not to the House of Kepresen- 
tatives, or even to Congress, but to the President 
of the United States;" that, while the President 
received a declaration from the House of Repre- 
sentatives with the respect to which it was en- 
titled, he did not contemplate any departure from 
the policy he had hitherto pursued as to France 
and Mexico; and that the French government 
would be seasonably apprised of any change which 
he might at any future time think proper to adopt. ^ 
Fortunately this declaration calmed the French 
government, and the new war, which Congress 
seemed to court, without considering that in all 
probability it might have been fatal to our suc- 
cess in the struggle we had already on hand, was 
averted by the good sense of the President and 
Seward. 

Maximilian never obtained the popular vote call- 
ing him to the throne, upon which he had at first 
insisted as a condition precedent to his acceptance 
of the crown. He went to Mexico in the summer 
of 1864. Negotiations were had from time to 
time between this government and France to in- 

1 April 7, 1864. Dip. Corr., 1865, pt. 3, pp. 356-357. See, 
also, Williams v. Suffolk Ins. Co., 3 Sumner, 372, 13 Peters, U. S. 
Sup. Ct. Reports, p. 415. 



362 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

duce the emperor to withdraw his troops. After 
the collapse o£ the Confederacy, attempts were 
made to persuade the administration to force 
France to withdraw her troops at once; but Sew- 
ard thought it wiser to give her the opportunity to 
act in the matter, in appearance at least, upon her 
own judgment, and not under compulsion. He 
succeeded in doing this. The French troops were 
gradually withdrawn during the year 1867, with- 
out our having assumed any position which could 
wound the pride of our old Revolutionary ally. 
When they left, Maximilian declined to desert his 
Mexican supporters. He was captured by the 
republican army. Seward interfered in vain to 
procure his release and liberty to return to Eu- 
rope; the soldiers insisted on his execution, and 
the Mexican President did not dare to refuse their 
demand. 

If among Seward's dispatches during the course 
of the war there are some that deal with generali- 
ties, and seem prolix and dull, yet his discussions 
of the actual questions submitted to him are open 
to no such criticism. They are vigorous, simple, 
direct, and to the point, and always manly and 
dignified. Lord Russell said no more than the 
truth, when he spoke of the singular and varied 
ability exhibited in them. They are a credit to 
American diplomacy, a monument to Seward's 
unwearied powers of work, and to his intellectual 
capacity and resources. 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR 363 

Tried by its results, the success of his diplomacy 
during the four years of Lincoln's administration 
is entitled to the highest praise. We were en- 
gaged in a domestic struggle which was taxing our 
resources to the utmost, and in which we had not 
the cordial good-will of a single one of the great 
nations of the world, unless it were Russia. The 
opportunities for differences with these countries 
were numerous, the dangers of the interference or 
intervention of one or more of them, or of the 
outbreak of a war between us and any one of 
them, were almost constant. Seward conducted 
us safely through all these perils, with no breach 
of the peace and no sacrifice of the honor or dig- 
nity of the country. 



CHAPTER XXI 

SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON — RETIRE- 
MENT FROM PUBLIC LIFE 

The Union troops entered Richmond on the 3d 
of April, 1865. Two days later Seward was 
thrown from his carriage ; his right shoulder was 
dislocated, his jaw broken on both sides, and he 
was otherwise so badly injured that for a time his 
life was despaired of. Nine days afterwards, late 
at night, when only his nurse and daughter were 
with him, an unknown man succeeded in entering 
the house, burst open the door of his chamber, 
rushed to his bedside, and with a bowie-knife 
slashed and stabbed him in the face and throat, 
till, alarmed by the wakening household, the 
would-be assassin hastened to escape, fled through 
the open door, mounted his horse, and rode away. 
This assault was one act in the conspiracy of 
which the supreme tragedy was the murder of Lin- 
coln in the theatre. 

Seward survived ; but for more than a year he 
was compelled to wear mechanical appliances to 
retain the broken jaw in its place. Before he 
could leave his bed he insisted on trying to work, 
and scrawled on scraps of paper directions for his 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 365 

letters ; so soon as he could be moved he was car- 
ried daily to his chair in the State Department, 
where he sat, the shrunk, maimed, and disfigured 
semblance of his former self. The injuries which 
he survived brought on him the great sorrows of 
his life. Mrs. Seward, who had been for some 
time an invalid, hastened from Auburn to Wash- 
ington on learning of his accident. On the night 
of the assault she was roused by the screams of 
her daughter, and rushing from her room found 
her husband in the state we have described. The 
shock was too much for her; she survived it only 
two months, dying on the 21st of June. The trib- 
utes of praise to her knew no exception. Sew- 
ard's friends and foes alike recognized her charm 
and her worth, and knew that for him the loss was 
irreparable. But this was not the only life that 
was sacrificed to the assault upon him. His only 
daughter, who, next to her mother, was the person 
dearest and most important to him, was in his 
room, saw the attack, his struggles and attempts, 
in spite of his feebleness, to shield her from any 
blows, and the scenes of that night killed her. 
She lived little more than a year ; and her death 
left Seward very desolate. 

Though for some days after his injuries Sew- 
ard's life was in great danger, yet thanks to his 
vigorous constitution, his unfailing courage, his 
excellent physical condition, and his equable tem- 
perament, his recovery was rapid, and less than 
four weeks after the attack on him he was able to 



366 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

receive the President and cabinet at his house. 
In this short time there had been a revolution in 
our political world. The Southern Confederacy 
had ceased to exist, its government had collapsed, 
its officials were dispersed, its soldiers had been 
paroled and sent home by our victorious generals. 
The questions of the true relation of all the seced- 
ing States to the Union, and of the proper treat- 
ment of these States, had therefore to be dealt with 
at once, — whilst their secession had been more 
gradual, some of them having been the ringleaders 
in rebellion, and others having followed with more 
or less reluctance and hesitation. It had been 
Mr. Lincoln's idea that no uniform rule should be 
established, to be applied indiscriminately to the 
rehabilitation of all these States; but that each 
one should be treated as seemed wisest with refer- 
ence to its own people and condition, without 
regard to the others, always bearing in mind the 
declared object of the contest on our part, — "the 
maintenance and preservation of the Union," — 
and troubling ourselves as little as possible with 
theories as to the effect of their attempted seces- 
sion upon the relations of these States to the fed- 
eral government. He also believed that it was 
for him, as President, to determine when the re- 
bellion had been so far crushed that military rul« 
could come to an end, the troops be withdrawn, 
the ordinary machinery of civil government put in 
motion, and the State left to itself; each house 
of Congress having, as to any of the States in 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 367 

rebellion, the same constitutional right that it ha& 
as to all the States, to be "the judge of the elec- 
tions, returns, and qualifications of its own mem- 
bers." He had already put in practice in Loui- 
siana a scheme which seemed to him satisfactory 
for that State, and two representatives chosen 
there in the autumn of 1862 had been admitted as 
members of Congress in February of the following 
year. A similar experiment was tried in Arkan- 
sas about the same time. 

In his annual message in December, 1863, the 
President made a full statement of what he had 
done to bring about the resumption of the national 
authority in the States where it had been sus- 
pended, and transmitted with the message a copy 
of an amnesty proclamation, granting a pardon 
to those persons concerned in the rebellion, who 
would take an oath to support the Constitution of 
the United States, the Union of the States there- 
under, and all acts of Congress with reference to 
slaves passed during the rebellion, "so long and 
so far as not repealed, modified, or held void by 
Congress, or by decision of the Supreme Court." 
Six classes of persons were excepted from the 
promised pardon. Whenever in any of the States 
in rebellion a number of voters, not belonging to 
any of the excepted classes, and equal to ten per 
cent, of those voting for President in 1860, should 
have taken the required oath, he was willing to 
trust them to form a state government, and, if it 
were such a republican government as the Consti- 



368 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

tution provides that the United States shall guar- 
antee to every State in the Union, to recognize it 
as the true government of the State. He was 
careful to say that he did not intend this to be 
a Procrustean bed to which exact conformity was 
indispensable, and that he would by no means 
exclude consideration and adoption of other plans. 
The message and proclamation were not well 
received by Congress. There was a general feel- 
ing of irritation that the President should have 
assumed upon his own responsibility the initiative 
and power of decision in a matter which, it was 
said, was either exclusively a subject for legisla- 
tion, or one about which Congress should at least 
have been consulted. In the Senate Sumner of- 
fered a resolution declaring that a State pretending 
to secede from the Union, and "battling against 
the general government to maintain that position, 
must be regarded as a rebel State subject to mili- 
tary occupation, and without rejiresentation . . . 
until it has been re-admitted by both houses of 
Congress." The Senate was not yet ready for so 
strong a statement, and a resolve that "the rebel- 
lion was not so far suppressed in Arkansas as to 
entitle that State to representation in Congress " 
was substituted and passed. The definitive action, 
however, in reply to the President, was a bill, 
— the first reconstruction act, — passed on the 
last day of the session, July 4, 1864. This act 
required the President to appoint a provisional 
governor for each of the States which had been 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 369 

declared in rebellion, who, when military resistance 
ceased, should make an enrollment of the white 
male citizens. If a majority of them should take 
an oath to support the Constitution, the governor 
was to order an election of delegates for a consti- 
tutional convention. This convention was to de- 
clare on behalf of the people of the State their 
submission to the Constitution of the United States, 
and also to insert in the constitution to be framed 
for the State, articles providing that no office- 
holder under the Confederate government, except 
civil officers merely ministerial and military offi- 
cers of inferior grades, should ever vote for, or be, 
either governor or a member of the state legisla- 
ture; that no rebel war debt, state or Confederate, 
should ever be paid, and that slavery was forever 
prohibited. When a constitution containing these 
provisions should have been adopted by a majority 
of the popular vote, the governor was to certify 
the fact to the president, and the president, after 
receiving the assent of Congress, was to recognize 
the state government as established. 

This act was not signed by Mr. Lincoln, and 
a few days after the adjournment of Congress, he 
made public his reasons for this, which were, that 
he was not willing to commit himself to one in- 
flexible plan of restoration ; or to discourage and 
repel the loyal citizens of Louisiana and Arkansas, 
and set aside their free state ^ governments; or 

1 Slavery had already been abolished in both these States by 
constitutional amendments. 



370 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

to declare Congress constitutionally competent to 
abolisli slavery in the States. He said, however, 
that if any States chose to adopt the plan proposed 
in the bill, he would render them all possible 
executive assistance and would appoint military 
governors to act according to its provisions. Wade 
of the Senate, and Henry Winter Davis of the 
House, replied to the President in a paper person- 
ally vituperative, and reflecting on his motives, 
which the country knew to be above suspicion. 
Lincoln was reelected. Congress at its next ses- 
sion (February 4, 1865) passed a joint resolve 
declaring certain States not entitled to representa- 
tion in the electoral college. This resolve excluded 
Arkansas and Louisiana, and was intended as a 
rebuke to the President. It was sent to him for 
his signature. He returned it, signed, but with 
a message stating that he signed it "in deference 
to the views implied in its passage and presenta- 
tion," though he thought Congress had complete 
power to exclude all electoral votes which it deemed 
illegal, and that the President could not by his 
veto obstruct or defeat the exercise of this power. 
He disclaimed all right of interference, and said 
that by his signature he expressed no opinion on 
the recital of the preamble, and no judgment upon 
the subject of the resolve. 

This short statement shows the substance of 
what had been done in the way of reconstruction 
before Lincoln's death, and makes sufficiently clear 
the radical difference already existing between the 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 371 

President and Congress, and the measures adopted 
by Congress to assert and maintain its right of 
control in the matter of reconstruction. Lincoln 
was very desirous to avoid a personal issue, and 
willing to make any concessions which did not in- 
volve a sacrifice of his convictions, or of what he 
believed to be the prerogatives and duties of his 
office. In his last public utterance, only a few 
days before his death, he reaffirmed his faith in 
the wisdom and justice of his course, and his con- 
viction that any inflexible plan of reconstruction 
would be a mistake. He had originally called for 
troops to suppress a resistance to the execution of 
the laws, too powerful to be overcome by the ordi- 
nary judicial processes. There is no question that 
it is for the president alone to determine when 
the emergency has arisen which authorizes him to 
require the aid of the soldiery for this purpose; 
and in the absence of any express provision of 
law, it seemed to Lincoln a legitimate conclusion, 
that it was also for him to decide when the exi- 
gency had ceased and the enforcement of the laws 
could safely be left to the civil authorities; and 
that it was his duty, therefore, to ascertain, by 
whatever means seemed to him best adapted for 
the purpose, the facts necessary for his decision 
upon this poinc. 

All that Lincoln did as to reconstruction may 
be explained and justified as being the means he 
adopted to satisfy himself as to the public opinion 
and temper of the South, and to determine whether 



372 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

the troops could be withdrawn, and the execution 
of the laws of the United States safely intrusted 
to the ordinary civil government. To secure this 
it was necessary that the leading men of the South 
should accept without reservation all the results of 
the failure of their attempted revolution, should 
honestly endeavor to make the best of the situa- 
tion, should be ready to take the hand that Lincoln 
was holding out to them, and to cooperate heartily 
with him to bring about the harmonious restoration 
of the Union. If they would not do this, either 
they must be disfranchised and the work intrusted 
to less competent hands, or the military rule must 
be prolonged until there should be some satisfac- 
tory security that the rebel States had not merely 
laid down their arms, but that they would not try 
to evade the new conditions imposed upon them 
by the emancipation of their slaves and the aboli- 
tion of slavery. Possibly, if Lincoln had lived, 
their confidence in his candor, his integrity, his 
magnanimity and kindliness, aided by his own rare 
tact and knowledge of men, might have caused 
his plan to be honestly accepted by the Southern 
leaders. If he had succeeded in this, it is more 
than probable that he would have had the support 
of a majority in the thirty -ninth Congress (March 
4, 1865, to March 4, 1867), which, as we shall see, 
was at first induced with some difiiculty to overrule 
Johnson's vetoes; if his plan had not worked satis- 
factorily, he would have been open-minded enough 
to recognize its failure, and wise enough to modify 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 373 

or even to abandon it, as the case might require. 
Whether he would ever have assented to imposing 
upon the South the emancipated slaves as voters 
is more doubtful. He would not have excluded 
any one from the ballot on account of his color; 
but he never went farther than to suggest that it 
was worthy of consideration whether the franchise 
might not be conferred as a special privilege on 
some of the more capable and deserving of the 
colored citizens. He would have been extremely 
reluctant to subject the white population of the 
South to what he would have realized they must 
feel as so gross a wrong and humiliation, or to 
impose on them as voters an ignorant proletariat 
of a different race, the mass of whom were totally 
unfit for the ballot, whose number in all the seced- 
ing States taken together was only one fifth less 
than that of the whites, while in three of them it 
was actually greater. In the end Congress gave 
the colored people the ballot, as essential to their 
protection; but the race problem at the South, 
even though the outlook should be thought hope- 
ful, is by no means yet settled. 

There were persons both in Congress and in the 
country who thought that the accession of Johnson 
to the presidency would save us from the conse- 
quences of what seemed to them Lincoln's ill-ad- 
vised leniency and trust. A caucus of politicians 
holding these views was held on the very day of 
Lincoln's death, to consider the questions of a 
new cabinet and of a less conciliatory policy ; and 



374 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

on the next morning the chairman of the recon- 
struction committee said to the new President: 
"Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, 
there will be no trouble now in running the gov- 
ernment." 

Both before and after his inauguration, Johnson 
had talked of treason as a crime to be punished, 
and this and similar sayings of his had created an 
impression that he would make harder terms with 
the States in rebellion, before permitting them to 
get back into their "proper practical relations 
with the Union," than Lincoln would have done. 
But no such inference is fairly to be drawn from 
what he had said. He was speaking, not of harsh- 
ness to communities, but of the punishment of in- 
dividuals, and hoped for convictions for treason 
just as he desired the condemnation of Mr. Lin- 
coln's assassins. The legal and practical difficul- 
ties in the way of obtaining such convictions he 
realized later. 

The thirty-eighth Congress had expired with 
the close of Lincoln's first administration; and 
unless the President should call an extra session, 
it would be nearly nine months before the new 
Congress met. Johnson did not call it together 
sooner; in this he followed the plan of Mr. Lin- 
coln, who had thought it fortunate that there was 
to be so long an interval between the end of the 
rebellion and the coming together of Congress. 
Johnson's constitutional opinions were well known. 
He believed the Union intact, and that it included 



' SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 375 

as well the States whicli had undertaken to secede 
as those which had remained loyal. "It is the 
doctrine of the Constitution," he had said, "that 
no State can go out of this Union, and moreover 
Congress cannot eject a State from this Union." 
He had resigned his seat in the Senate of the 
United States, and gone to Tennessee at Mr. Lin- 
coln's solicitation, as military governor, to facili- 
tate the resumption by that State of her proper 
relations to the federal government ; he had initi- 
ated the measures necessary for this purpose, ac- 
cepting and acting upon the policy which Lincoln 
had employed in Louisiana, — that civil govern- 
ment should be substituted for military rule when- 
ever armed resistance had ceased, and the presi- 
dent, as commander-in-chief, was satisfied that 
the people of a State were prepared loyally to ac- 
cept and abide by the results of the struggle, how- 
ever bitter they might feel them to be. It would 
have been impossible for Johnson to hold any 
other opinion upon the constitutional questions 
involved in the rebellion. Only upon the theory 
that Tennessee, in spite of the ordinance of seces- 
sion, was still an integral part of the Union could 
he properly have retained his seat as senator from 
that State, or been nominated and elected as vice- 
president, or be now discharging the duties of 
president of the United States. This opinion was 
not the outcome of his controversy with Congress; 
it was his settled conviction before any controversy 
arose, and it governed all his official action on the 



376 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

different reconstruction measures that came before 
him. 

Early in May, 1865, he issued a proclamation 
announcing that hostilities had ceased. Three 
weeks later he published a proclamation of am- 
nesty, the terms of which were identical with those 
granted by Lincoln, except that he added seven 
more to the classes of persons excluded from the 
benefits of the former proclamation. No criticisms 
were made as to any of these additions, unless it 
be as to the last, which shut out from the right to 
a pardon "all voluntary participants in the rebel- 
lion having more than twenty thousand dollars 
worth of taxable property." He has been charged 
with having inserted this for the purpose of strik- 
ing at a class of men "whom he personally hated; " 
but the accusation seems unjust. This exception 
would not strike the aristocratic slaveholders, who 
had lost everything by the extinction of slavery, 
and of whom Johnson might personally complain, 
but the prosperous business men and traders, ear- 
nest Southern sympathizers, active and influential 
in promoting the rebellion, of whom Johnson had 
just had experience in Tennessee, who were not 
included in any of the previously excepted classes, 
but who were in his opmion equally undeserving 
of pardon. 

There was also added to this proclamation a 
clause that special application for pardon might 
be made by any one belonging to the excepted 
classes, and that such clemency would be extended 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 377 

him as might be "consistent with the facts of the 
case and the peace and dignity of the United 
States." It has been said that this clause was in- 
serted at Seward's instance, and that he favored 
it for various petty reasons, as it is also asserted 
that he resisted as long as he could the previous 
clause excepting men of property. What founda- 
tion there may be for these assertions it is difficult 
to ascertain, but the imputation of low motives is 
a purely gratuitous aspersion. The final clause 
is an extremely proper one, and should not have 
been omitted. It was substantially copied by Con- 
gress when it had succeeded in obtaining control 
of the whole subject of reconstruction ; ^ and the 
reasons for its insertion were in each case the same. 
That the clemency sanctioned by this clause was 
abused is unquestionable; but this would not 
justify omitting the clause itself. The pardoning 
power is often unwisely exercised, but the neces- 
sity for its existence is everywhere recognized; and 
it cannot be denied that Congress as well as the 
President made mistakes as to some of the persons 
restored to the rights of citizenship. 

On the day that this proclamation was issued, 
Johnson appointed a provisional governor for North 
Carolina, and before the middle of July had made 
similar appointments for the other rebel States for 
whose government there were no existing provi- 
sions. These officers were directed to take mea- 
sures to call conventions to be composed of dele- 

^ Fourteenth Amendment to Constitution, Sec. iii. 



378 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

gates chosen by the loyal voters of the respective 
States. These voters were defined to be those 
persons, possessing the qualifications required by 
the laws of the State before its secession, who were 
entitled to the benefits of the amnesty proclama- 
tion, and who had taken the prescribed oath. 
These requirements followed the precedents estab- 
lished by Lincoln in Louisiana, Arkansas, and 
Tennessee, and restricted the suffrage to white 
men. The object of each convention was declared 
to be to secure to its State that republican form 
of government guaranteed by the Constitution of 
the United States; the insurrection having de- 
prived the States in rebellion of all recognized 
civil governments. The convention, or the subse- 
quent legislature in each State, was to prescribe, 
it was said by the President, "the qualifications 
of electors, and the eligibility of persons to hold 
office under the constitution and laws of the State, ^ 
a power the people of the several States composing 
the federal Union have rightfully exercised from 
the origin of the government until the present 
time.'" 

This last sentence emphasizes one point in the 
differences between Congress and himself. The 
bill of the previous July had insisted that the state 
constitutions to be adopted must provide that no 
Confederate officer of rank or importance, civil or 
military, should ever vote for, or be, governor, or 

^ Lincoln took a similar view as to the work of the Louisiana 
convention. N. Sf H. viii. p. 434. 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 379 

a member of the legislature; and the President 
now declared that in his opinion these were mat- 
ters to be determined not by congressional dicta- 
tion, but, as they always had been, by the several 
States, each for itself, and that the Southern States 
had not by the rebellion lost the right to do this. 
Both the President and Congress, however, were 
agreed that something was required, as proof that 
the rebellion was really over, before the troops 
could be properly withdrawn and the people of 
any seceding State be permitted to organize a civil 
government and resume their old relations to the 
Union; they were also agreed that some oath 
should be required of these people. The President 
during this summer had further insisted with each 
of these States upon its abolition of slavery, its 
ratification of the thirteenth constitutional amend- 
ment, which forever prohibited slavery, and its 
absolute repudiation of all rebel war debts, declar- 
ing that he could "not recognize the people of any 
State as having resumed the relations of loyalty 
to the Union, who admitted the legality of obliga- 
tions contracted or debts created in their name to 
promote the war of the rebellion." 

In all that he was doing the President assumed 
to act in the exercise of the war power, and by 
virtue of his authority as commander-in-chief. 
For any legislation by Congress authority must be 
found either in the Constitution itself, — where 
the only clause which seemed to have any bearing 
on the matter was that which makes each house 



380 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

the judge of tlie elections, returns, and qualifica- 
tions of its own members, — or in the assumption 
that the seceding States had forfeited all their 
constitutional rights, were to be treated like any- 
conquered people, and that therefore Congress had 
absolute authority over them. This assumption 
is the ground upon which the constitutionality of 
the reconstruction act of March 2, 1867, is to be 
defended; yet in this very act Congress showed 
its want of confidence in the soundness of this 
theory. It recognized these States as constituent 
members of the Union for the purpose of vot- 
ing on the fourteenth constitutional amendment, 
while with a palpable inconsistency it denied them 
their right of representation, unless they voted 
in a particular way. This theory was originally 
propounded by Thaddeus Stevens in the House 
and by Sumner in the Senate, in the resolve 
already quoted. It was never thoroughly accepted 
even in Congress, was not sustained by the Su- 
preme Court, was never believed in by Lincoln, 
and was denied by many leading statesmen and 
jurists.^ 

To get the votes of those who could not accept Stevens' 
theory, the reconstruction acts were declared to be an exercise 
of authority under that clause of the Constitution by which 
the United States is to guarantee to every State in the Union a 
republican form of government. This declaration afterward 
found support in the opinion of Chief Justice Chase in Texas 
V, White (7 Wallace, 700). To maintain this view, however, 
seems to oblige one to do violence to the natural and obvious 
meaning of this clause, and to give it an efiFect certainly never 
contemplated by the makers of the Constitution. 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 381 

It has been asserted that Johnson, after he be- 
came president, changed his whole opinion of the 
proper policy to be pursued towards the seceding 
States, and that this change was owing to Seward's 
persuasive powers and the immense influence he 
had thereby acquired over the President.^ The 
two statements depend on each other; if there was 
no such change in the President, then it was cer- 
tainly not caused by Seward's influence. The 
real difficulty with Johnson was exactly the oppo- 
site one, — the obstinacy with which he adhered 
to his policy towards the '^cuth, after it became 
evident that it was a mistake and a failure. The 
persons who charge the President with reversing 
his entire policy towards the South have confounded 
two things which Johnson himself kept quite dis- 
tinct, the proper treatment of individual wrong- 
doers, the leaders in rebellion, for whom he thought 
no punishment too severe, and the leniency to be 
shown to the communities who had followed their 
guidance, whom he was always disposed to treat 
with the utmost consideration. His opinions upon 
constitutional questions were those he had main- 
tained before his election as vice-president. He 
believed that the Union was indissoluble; that the 
Constitution secured certain rights to the States 
as well as to the federal government; that though 
the exercise of these rights on the one side or the 

^ This is the view of Mr. Blaine ; but General Grant, whose 
relations with the President entitle his conclusions to much more 
weight, " thought the plan the child of Johnson's own brain." 



382 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

other might be for a time suspended or prevented, 
the rights themselves could not be forfeited or lost ; 
and his course as president and all his vetoes were 
not merely consistent with this view, they depended 
upon it and were its logical outcome. In appoint- 
ing provisional governors of the several rebel 
States, and in all that he did towards bringing 
them back to their true position as an integral 
part of the Union, he believed himself to be care- 
fully following in Lincoln's footsteps. He un- 
doubtedly hoped and expected in this way to con- 
vert repentant rebels into loyal Unionists; yet 
before Congress met, he had ample evidence, if 
he had chosen to heed it, that the Southerners 
were neither loyal nor submissive, but absolutely 
unregenerate and untrustworthy. Had he been 
a man of a different nature he would have seen 
this, and would have modified his treatment of 
them when he found that it was resulting in the 
restoration of authority to insurgents, who, while 
laying down their arms, retained their hostility to 
the government that had compelled their submis- 
sion. But he had neither the perception, nor the 
flexibility, nor the breadth of mind necessary for 
this. He was a person essentially narrow, obsti- 
nate, and conceited, was coarse and vulgar, and 
possessed of a very bad temper which caused him 
to lose his head when it got the mastery. Like 
many common men he was conscious of his defects, 
very sensitive to ridicule or to any mark of disre- 
spect, and easily affected by attentions or even 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 383 

gross flattery. He had made an unfortunate exhi- 
bition of himself on inauguration day, and never 
forgot that Sumner had urged that, in consequence 
of this, he should be requested to resign. His 
first message in December, 1865, shows, however, 
that he had then no wish or expectation of quar- 
reling with Congress. But in little more than a 
month after the beginning of the session, a reso- 
lution offered by a Republican, expressing confi- 
dence in the President and in his cooperation with 
Congress in restoring to their equal position and 
rights the States lately in insurrection, was buried 
by sending it to the committee on reconstruction; 
and Johnson felt most keenly the indignity thus 
offered him by his own party. 

In his message in December the President had 
stated correctly the alternative modes of dealing 
with the Southern States. Either they must be 
retained under military subjection for a period 
longer or shorter as circumstances might require, 
or they must be brought back into practical rela- 
tions with the Union, as quickly as possible, by 
methods which necessarily implied a trust in the 
loyalty of the people. The objections to the former 
scheme were, that it was opposed to all our ideas 
as to the right of self-government, and that it 
assumed that the seceding States were practically 
out of the Union, and the South a conquered 
country over which we had full power. The 
objections to the latter course were, that it seemed 
to impose no penalty on rebellion, and that its 



384 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

success depended upon the existence at the South 
of a sufficient body of people loyal to the United 
States, and prepared to accept the results of the 
war. Lincoln and Johnson both believed in the 
existence of such a body, large enough to form 
and organize state governments and to serve as 
a nucleus round which the mass of the citizens 
would crystallize. Time showed that they were 
mistaken in this belief, and that the four years of 
war had substantially extinguished for the time 
the Union sentiment in the seceding States, as it 
Lad destroyed the peace Democracy at the North. 
The congressional plan of reconstruction, which 
was finally adopted, assmned that the North had 
prevailed in a war of conquest, and had the con- 
querors' right to deal with the Southerners as a 
subjugated people. Johnson opposed this plan by 
all the means in his power. The contest between 
him and Congress was most bitter; it was carried 
on by vetoes on the one side, and by the passage 
of bills over these vetoes on the other, by attacks 
of the President on Congress in various public 
addresses, while in Congress there were attacks 
upon him, equally bitter and unjustifiable, which 
resulted in an impeachment and a trial, upon 
which no man not a partisan can reflect without a 
sense of shame. 

Before Lincoln's death an act of Congress had 
established the freedmen's bureau. Early in 1866 
a bill was passed enlarging the powers of this 
bureau, and extending the period of its existence. 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 385 

This bill the President vetoed on constitutional 
and other grounds, and his veto was sustained. 
A second bill was then introduced, drawn not with 
a view to overcoming the President's objections 
and obtaining his approval, but with regard to the 
ability to pass it over his veto, which was done on 
the same day that the veto message was received 
(July 16, 1866). "It required, however, potent 
persuasion reinforced by the severest party disci- 
pline to prevent a serious break in both houses 
against the bill," and to carry it over the veto. 

In April, before the passage of this act, a civil 
rights bill, giving to the colored people in every 
State equal civil rights with the whites, had also 
been passed over the President's veto; but to se- 
cure the majority required to do this, it had been 
found necessary to unseat by a strict party vote a 
Democrat, who would otherwise have retained his 
place in the Senate, and to insist upon a vote, 
when one of the Republicans who sided with the 
President was ill and unable to be in his seat. In 
December, 1865, Congress had passed the thir- 
teenth amendment to the Constitution. This pro- 
hibited slavery everywhere. In June, 1866, they 
passed the fourteenth amendment, which declared 
all persons born or naturalized here to be citizens, 
prohibited any State from abridging their privi- 
leges or immunities, and proportionally reduced 
the representation in Congress and in the electoral 
college of any State which denied to any of its 
male citizens the right of suffrage. This amend- 



386 WILLIAIVI HENRY SEWARD 

ment also prohibited any person who, having taken 
an oath to sujjport the Constitution of the United 
States, had engaged in insurrection, from holding 
any office under the United States or in any State, 
unless this disability should have been removed 
by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. 
The proposed amendment was no affair of the 
President's, but he very unwisely sent to Congress 
a message expressing his disapproval of it. 

By a series of offensive speeches, beginning on 
AYashington's Birthday and culminating in those 
which he delivered at various places during a sum- 
mer tour in 1866, Johnson had succeeded in utterly 
disgusting the people, and had wholly lost the 
confidence of the country. The autumn elections 
went decidedly against him, and gave to his oppo- 
nents a free hand. In the following year Congress 
passed the military reconstruction bill, which laid 
down the conditions required of any State to obtain 
the admission of its senators and representatives to 
Congress, and the counting of its votes in the elec- 
toral college. These conditions were: the adop- 
tion of a constitution which granted universal 
suffrage, which abolished slavery forever, which 
prohibited the payment of any rebel war debt, 
which secured absolute equality between all classes 
of citi^jens; and the ratification by the State of 
both the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to 
the Constitution. To these was added one further 
condition. No State in insurrection was to be 
admitted to representation in Congress or in the 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 387 

electoral college until the thirteenth and fourteenth 
amendments had become part of the Constitution 
by the ratification of two thirds of the States. 
Meantime the Southern States were divided into 
various military districts, several States being 
united for this purpose, and placed under a single 
commander. This bill was vetoed by the Presi- 
dent, but was passed over the veto. 

This was the plan of reconstruction which was 
finally carried out. Whether it would have worked 
satisfactorily had the President and Congress been 
cordially at one in endeavoring to promote its 
success, is uncertain. Before it was adopted the 
President's plan had failed. Unrepentant rebels 
had got control of state governments which he had 
recognized; there were outrages and riots, and, 
though slavery had been technically abolished, va- 
grant and apprentice laws had been passed in sev- 
eral of the Southern States, the purpose and effect 
of which was to reduce the colored people to a 
condition analogous to that from which they were 
supposed to have been freed. The seceding States 
at last accepted the terms which Congress had pre- 
scribed, but only because they found there was no 
escape from doing so, if they wished to be repre- 
sented in the House and Senate. In 1868 they all, 
with the exception of Virginia, Mississippi, and 
Texas, yielded to the requirements of the law, and 
the three States last named made their submission 
in 1870. Although the States had accepted these 
conditions for the purpose of obtaining their old 



388 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

rights, they felt that they were not bound to ob- 
serve in good faith the obligations which had been 
forced upon them, and for several years they re- 
sorted to all sorts of expedients to deprive the 
freedmen of the free and fair exercise of the suf- 
frage to which they were legally entitled. The 
success of the congressional reconstruction scheme 
was therefore by no means an unqualified one. 
It was disapproved of at the time by some of the 
leaders and by a number of the members of the Re- 
publican party, and it had a considerable influence 
in inducing many of the most conservative of them 
to join at last the ranks of the Democracy. 

Though the President's reconstruction policy 
was not inspired by Seward, but had its origin in 
Johnson's own convictions as to the proper con- 
struction of the Constitution and the true position 
of the seceding States, and was in harmony with 
that which he had with Lincoln's approval pursued 
in Tennessee, yet it was the logical sequel of the 
doctrines reiterated by Seward again and again 
in his dispatches as secretary of state. ^ 

It would have been obviously impossible for 
Seward, after having labored for four years to 

^ In Senator Sherman's Recollections, published since this 
chapter was written, he says : " After this long lapse of time I 
am convinced that Mr. Johnson's scheme of reconstruction was 
wise and judicious." [Vol. i. p. 361.] Was it not the hostility 
between Congress and the President, rather than Johnson's pol- 
icy, that encouraged the subdued secessionists to try to evade the 
legislation of four years and escape the consequences of their 
unsuccessful rebellion ? 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 389 

satisfy the governments of Europe that the Union 
was intact, that we were engaged in quelling an 
insurrection and were not embarked in a war of 
conquest, to deny his own instructions and assent 
to the new congressional theories and to the legis- 
lation which followed them. He thought the course 
of Congress unwise as well as unconstitutional; he 
knew the President's honesty of purpose and hoped 
to restrain his impetuosity of speech or to modify 
its consequences ; he believed in the soundness of 
his constitutional views and the correctness of his 
vetoes; he regretted extremely the dissensions 
which had arisen from the differences of opinion 
as to the best mode of reconstruction ; but did not 
consider these differences or dissensions as of pri- 
mary importance. He had no doubt that the States 
which had ceased their resistance in the field would 
in some way, after no long delay, come again into 
the full enjoyment of their privileges as members 
of the Union; and that time would not merely 
heal the wounds of the war, but would also efface 
any bitterness which might follow the harsh mea- 
sures of Congress ; and so believing, he was not a 
violent partisan of either party. Speaking at the 
Cooper Institute on Washington's Birthday, he 
said: "I am not here as an alarmist; I am not 
here to say that the nation is in peril or danger — 
in peril if you adopt the opinions of the President; 
in peril if you reject them ; in peril if you adopt 
the views of the apparent or real majority of Con- 
gress, or if you reject them. Nor do I think the 



390 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

cause of liberty and human freedom, the cause of 
progress or civilization, the cause of national ag- 
grandizement present or future, material or moral, 
is in danger of being long arrested, whether you 
adopt one set of political opinions or another. 
The Union has been rescued from all its perils. 
The noble ship has passed from tempest and bil- 
lows within the verge of a safe harbor, without a 
broken spar or a leak, starboard or larboard, fore 
or aft. There are some small reefs yet to pass as 
she approaches her moorings. One pilot says that 
she may safely enter directly through them. The 
other says that she must back, and, lowering sail, 
take time to go around them. That is all the 
difference of opinion between the pilots. I should 
not practice my habitual charity if I did not admit 
that I think them both sincere and honest. But 
the vessel will go in safely, one way or the other. 
The worst that need happen will be that, by taking 
the wrong Instead of the right passage, or even 
taking the right passage and avoiding the wrong 
one, the vessel may roll a little, and some honest, 
capable, and even deserving politicians, statesmen, 
president, or congressmen may get washed over- 
board. I should be sorry for this, but if it cannot 
be helped, it can be borne. If I am one of the 
unfortunates, let no friend be concerned on that 
account." 

Seward remained in the cabinet, however, not 
so much to take part in the process of reconstruc- 
tion as because he wished to dispose of the diplo- 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 391 

matic questions which the war had left unsettled, 
and thus to finish his work ; he knew that he would 
have freedom of action in dealing with foreign 
powers, and thought it his duty under the circum- 
stances to remain at his post, and there is no reason 
to suppose that he ever regretted doing so. The 
labors of his office he found much less onerous than 
during the war, and more fruitful and agreeable 
in their results. He made treaties with the vari- 
ous states of Central and South America for the 
settlement of all outstanding claims, and a conven- 
tion with Nicaragua, containing stipulations for 
a transit between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, 
the Nicaragua Canal. As has already been stated, 
the French were induced by negotiations, and 
without a resort to war on our part, to withdraw 
their troops from Mexico, and the republican gov- 
ernment was reestablished there, though its advent 
to power was stained by the execution of Maximil- 
ian, whose life Seward's exertions were unable to 
save. 

The European governments had always denied 
the right of any native-born subject to cast off 
his allegiance to his own country and to become 
a citizen of an adopted one. Our naturalization 
laws permitted a foreigner to do this, and personal 
complications were constantly arising on account 
of this difference. Seward succeeded, at first with 
Prussia and afterwards with various other coun- 
tries of Europe, in arranging this matter on a 
satisfactory basis. He also made a treaty with 



392 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

the island of Madagascar which opened to us trade 
and commerce there, and under which this country 
absorbed about two thirds of the entire foreign 
business of that island, and retained it until the 
recent conquest and annexation of Madagascar by 
France. 

Any practical discussion of the Alabama claims 
was negatived by Lord Russell's emphatic refusal 
to admit England's liability on this account; this 
matter therefore remained in abeyance until the 
change of ministry in 1868. Mr. Adams had 
resigned at the close of the previous year, and 
Reverdy Johnson had been sent to England in his 
place. He negotiated with Lord Clarendon a 
treaty for the settlement of these claims, which 
was known as the Johnson-Clarendon treaty. It 
gave to the United States, in substance, all that 
it got by the treaty of Washington; but it was 
rejected by the Senate, upon the ground that it 
belittled, by its form, the work to be done, ignored 
the greater national grievances, and contained 
no word of regret for the fact that American com- 
merce had been swept from the sea by the rebel 
cruisers, and for the enormous loss thus inflicted 
on the country. Though the actual treaty failed to 
be ratified, Seward had secured by it the essential 
concession, — an admission of the principle of 
arbitration for the settlement of our claims against 
Great Britain for the losses occasioned by these 
cruisers; and, this concession once made, a satis- 
factory treaty was sure sooner or later to follow. 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON 393 

The most important and successful treaty with 
which Seward's name will always remain associ- 
ated, was that for the purchase of Alaska. To 
many people it seemed a wild and visionary scheme 
to annex, at the cost of more than seven millions 
of dollars, this frozen region of the north; but 
Mr. Sumner was induced to see both its political 
and pecuniary value, and he made these so clear 
to the Senate that the treaty was easily ratified. 
Subsequent events have justified its wisdom ; Alaska 
has returned to the treasury of the United States 
many fold the original purchase money. 

Another treaty to which Seward attached great 
importance, that for the purchase from Denmark 
of the island of St. Thomas in the West Indies, 
failed in the Senate, partly, one cannot but think, 
because of the bitter enmity of that body and its 
leaders to the President. We had suffered ex- 
ceedingly during the whole civil war from the want 
of a foothold and a harbor of our own in the West 
Indies, which might serve as a coaling and naval 
station ; and the great importance of a possession 
of this sort to us, in any war in which we might 
be either neutrals or belligerents, had been recog- 
nized by our military and naval commanders. St. 
Thomas fulfilled exactly the desired conditions. 
A small island, with a limited population, its pur- 
chase would give rise to no embarrassing questions 
as to how its people should be governed, or as to 
their participation in the public affairs of this 
country. It is poor in agricultural products and 



394 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

resources, but has a magnificent land-locked har- 
bor; it was at that time the great commercial en- 
trepot for trade with Venezuela, Porto Kico, San 
Domingo, and Hayti, and the principal rendezvous 
for the steam packets of various important West 
India lines; it had a population two thirds Protes- 
tant, with a language almost exclusively English. 
The facts that its agricultural products were few, 
and that it suffered from time to time, like other 
tropical islands, from the violent disturbances of 
the elements, rendered it no less valuable or im- 
portant to us for the purposes for which we re- 
quired it. 

This treaty had been much valued by Seward, 
and was vigorously championed by him, though it 
was not finally disposed of until after his term of 
office had expired. "It became a part of the great 
controversy between the Executive and Congress. 
The President and the State Department had ne- 
gotiated this treaty, and therefore, if for no other 
reason, the Senate would not consent to it."^ 
There were questions as to the price to be paid, 
and other financial considerations, which might 
have led to its rejection; but the judgment of 
practical experts like Secretary Fox and Admiral 
Porter, that the island would be of the greatest 
value and importance to us for naval purposes, is 
certainly entitled to far more weight than the 
opinions, however emphatic and decided, of those 
persons who had no such special knowledge or 
1 Dawes's /Sumner, 282. 



RETIREMENT FROM PUBLIC LIFE 395 

qualifications. The admiral and the secretary 
were both strenuous advocates of this treaty. 

At the close of President Johnson's administra- 
tion Seward resigned his office, and left Washing- 
ton. "I never saw him," wrote a friend at this 
time, "more happy than he is now; so different 
(without his stilts) from what he has been the last 
ten years." 

With short intervals of rest at home, the next 
two years and a half were spent by him in travel. 
He visited the western coast of America from 
Alaska to Lower California, crossed Mexico and 
returned by the West Indies, and later made a 
journey round the world, of which an account has 
been published, taken from his journals and dicta- 
tion. After his return he passed the remainder 
of his days, either in his homestead at Auburn, 
or in his son's cottage on Owasco Lake. Here, 
with his strength gradually failing, his temper 
always serene and cheerful, his mind clear and 
untouched, he waited the slow approach of Death. 
At work in the morning with his adopted daughter 
on his notes of travel, he lay down to rest, and 
the end came. He died on the 10th of October, 
1872. 

It may not be entirely amiss here to say a word 
of Seward as a man. In all the relations of pri- 
vate life he was most admirable: a devoted hus- 
band, a kind and sympathetic father, a firm and 
loyal friend, an excellent neighbor and citizen. 
The bitter disappointment of the people of Auburn 



396 WILLIAIVI HENRY SEWARD 

at his failure to receive the presidential nomina- 
tion in 1860 showed the love they bore him. His 
optimism in politics and in life generally was not 
merely the result of a disposition naturally cheer- 
ful and buoyant, but of a firm faith in an overrul- 
ing Providence. His industry was tireless, his 
capacity for work enormous. He often wrote far 
into the night, and during the years of his active 
practice as a lawyer the young men in his office 
would frequently find in the morning the floor of 
his room strewn with papers which he had written 
while they were asleep. 

His political life stretched over a period of 
nearly forty years, occupied with the discussion 
and settlement of the most vital and exciting ques- 
tions both by legislation and war. He has been 
charged with having no political convictions, but 
an examination of his public career seems to prove 
exactly the contrary. From first to last he was a 
consistent Whig. He believed in and advocated 
a protective tariff, internal improvements, and all 
the doctrines which formed the policy of that 
party. His hostility to slavery began with his life 
in Georgia, and what he saw there, while he was 
yet a mere lad. His opposition to it never ceased 
so long as slavery in any form was a political ques- 
tion; and he had the satisfaction, as secretary of 
state, of signing his name not merely to the Pro- 
clamation of Emancipation, but to both the con- 
stitutional amendments which secured to the col- 
ored people of this country complete civil equality 



RETIREMENT FROM PUBLIC LIFE 397 

with the whites. He was never, however, an abo- 
litionist. He was a steady and persistent advocate 
of gradual and compensated emancipation. From 
his short life at the South he realized more fully 
perhaps than any other Northern statesman the 
enormous difficulties and embarrassments which 
the sudden and violent freeing of the slaves would 
bring about at the South, — the destruction of 
property and the temporary ruin of all industries 
which such an emancipation would be likely to 
cause; and he had therefore a compassion for the 
people of that region, rebels though they had been, 
which peojDle at the North could hardly understand. 
He not only had convictions, but he had the 
courage of his convictions, and did not hesitate to 
separate himself from his friends, to oppose his 
party, or to risk his own popularity in support of 
these convictions. His defense of the poor negro 
Freeman is a striking example of this. His politi- 
cal life is full of illustrations of the same quality. 
His persistent support of what he regarded as 
the rights of the Roman Catholics in the public 
schools, and his opposition to the Know-nothing 
party, which cost him his nomination at Chicago, 
are marked instances of it. His political contro- 
versies never degenerated into personalities. He 
gave to his opponents the same credit for honesty 
of conviction which he expected them to accord 
to him, and numbered among his friends many of 
those who in public life were his political oppo- 
nents. He was not a shrewd political manager; 



398 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

he trusted to others to manage for him. Perfectly 
clean-handed himself, by the admission of those 
who had the least confidence in him, he may have 
permitted his political managers and friends to do 
what they thought was for his interest; but he 
knew very little about this; he surrendered him- 
self entirely into their hands, and had to bear the 
consequences of their mistakes, as well as receive 
the benefit of their successes. The severest judg- 
ments on him came from members of his own 
party, from whom he happened to differ as to a 
particular measure or policy, who were not clear- 
sighted enough to see, as he did, that "one half 
the effort of the anti-slavery men was lost, because 
it consisted of the incrimination of other anti- 
slavery men for shades of difference of opinion; 
and that the field was broad enough for all." 

He was most severely attacked, however, by the 
leaders of his own party for remaining in John- 
son's cabinet; and they spoke of him and treated 
him as a traitor. It would have been easier and 
pleasanter for him to have resigned, but to aban- 
don Johnson under the actual circumstances would 
have seemed to Seward like desertion, and he had 
to bring himself to bear, with such equanimity as 
he was master of, his old friends' avoidance of 
him. The cordial welcome he received and the 
honors paid him in all parts of the world during 
the next two years must have served to efface the 
recollection of this coldness and neglect. Though 
he never recovered his vigor of body after his 



RETIREMENT FROM PUBLIC LIFE 399 

injuries in 1865, the activity of his mind was in- 
exhaustible. He planned his travels, lest "rest 
should mean rust," and with the thought that the 
study of mankind would be the most interesting 
and least fatiguing pursuit for him. He might 
have expected a kindly welcome in California, for 
whose admission as a free State he had labored in 
the Senate, and in Alaska, which he had made a 
part of our country. He might have looked for 
a friendly reception from the republican president 
of Mexico, who was largely indebted to him as 
secretary of state ; but he could hardly have thought 
that from the day of his arrival until the day of 
his departure from that country he was to be, at 
every stage of his journey and at every resting 
place, not merely the government's, but the peo- 
ple's guest. There was apparently no hamlet so 
small that his name and fame had not preceded 
him there. Not the least grateful token of recog- 
nition that he received was in a village of cane 
huts, where the tall, swarthy headman handed 
into the carriage, with a profound bow, a scroll on 
which was written, "To the great statesman of the 
great Republic of the North. Techaluta is poor, 
but she is not ungrateful." 

In the East he was everywhere received with the 
highest honors. The Mikado of Japan unveiled 
his face to him in a friendly audience, an honor 
said to have been never before bestowed on a for- 
eigner; he also desired his ministers to converse 
with him on affairs of state, and it must have been 



400 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 

gratifying to Seward to have been asked by them 
to observe that, in dealing with the vanquished 
party in a late rebellion, "the government of 
Japan had copied the example of toleration given 
them by the United States." 

Throughout the entire EaSt his reception was 
the same. His reputation had everywhere pre- 
ceded him. The prince-regent of China rose from 
a sick-bed to visit him. The ministers of the va- 
rious countries were eager to see and to talk with 
the distinguished statesman of the West, of whom 
they had heard so much; the European governors 
and native princes of India vied with each other 
in their attentions to him. 

Seward's observation was quick and his percep- 
tions acute, and he returned home with his mind 
stored with the results and experience of travel, 
and with new and healthful interests and occupa- 
tions for the remainder of his days. In spite of 
his great sorrows and of his increasing infirmities, 
his last years were happy ones. Even in the 
busiest period of his life his own hearthstone had 
been always the place dearest to hun, and now the 
companionship and affection of his children and 
grandchildren and the society of his lifelong friends 
and neighbors were the solace and enjoyment of 
his serene old age. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abolitionists, applaud Seward's ac- 
tion in Virginia controversy, 35; be- 
gin agitation, 57, 58. 

Adams, Charles Francis, nominated 
for vice-president, 49; appointed 
minister to England, 268 ; his com- 
ing to be awaited by Russell before 
determining England's attitude, 276; 
sails for England, 278; his instruc- 
tions, 279 ; reminds Russell of par- 
allel case of 1774, 281 ; tries to ne- 
gotiate adherence of United States 
to Treaty of Paris, 289, 290; with 
Seward's approval, declines to sign 
on Russell's terms, 290; cautious 
letter of Seward to, on Trent affair, 
303 ; in 1865 tells Seward to dismiss 
fear of intervention, 326; complains 
of construction of Alabama, 346 ; in- 
structed to bring matters before the 
courts, 348; by Seward's instructioas 
asks England to amend foreign en- 
listment act, 349, 350 ; continues to 
protest against privateering, 352 ; on 
English jealousy of America, 353 ; 
resigns, 392. 

Adams, John Quincy, his reelection 
favored by Seward, 6, 10; visited 
by Seward, 13 ; joins anti-Masonic 
movement, 13, 14; thinks Seward 
damaged by controversy over slave- 
stealers, 37; defends right of peti- 
tion, 58. 

Alabama, Confederate cruiser, career 
of, 347, 348; diplomatic difficulties 
over, 348-350, 392. 

Alaska, purchase of, 393 ; visited by 
Seward, 395, 399. 

Albany Regency, attacked by Seward, 
8; controls New York Democracy, 
16. 

Albert, Prince Consort, causes modi- 



fication of English dispatch in Trent 
affair, 299. 

Amnesty proclamation of Lincoln, 
367, 368; of Johnson, 376, 377. 

Anderson, General Robert, commands 
at Fort Sumter, 206 ; sends news of 
his situation, 231, 232. 

Andrew, John A., on Seward's leader- 
ship, 196. 

Anti-Masonic party, its origin in west- 
ern New York, 11, 12 ; holds a na- 
tional convention, 12, 13 ; nominates 
Wirt for president, 13; loses ground 
in 1832, 13, 14; causes for its failure, 
14, 15. 

Arkansas, reconstruction in, 367, 368, 
370. 

Ashburton, Lord, his connection with 
McLeod affair, 33. 

Atchison, David R., advocates seizure 
of Kansas by South, 152, 154 ; leads 
Missourians to bum Lawrence, 155; 
denounced by Sumner, 162. 

Banes, General Nathaniel P., re- 
places General Butler at New Or- 
leans, 343. 

Bates, Edward, candidate for Republi- 
can nomination in 1860, 198; named 
for attorney-general, 213, 230; his 
character, 230; opposes provisioning 
of Fort Sumter, 233, 234; describes 
agreement of cabinet to Seward's 
position in Trent affair, 306; urges 
issuing emancipation proclamation, 
336. 

Beauregard, General P. G. T., informs 
Campbell that Sumter is not evacu- 
ated, 245 ; ordered to continue pre- 
parations to bombard it, 251. 

Bell, John, votes against Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, 118 ; opposes Lecomp- 



404 



INDEX 



ton bill, 183 ; nominated for presi- 
dent in 1860, 193. 

Benjamin, Judah P., plots secession, 
209. 

Benton, Thomas H., hopes of Free- 
soilers to nominate, in 1854, 136; op- 
poses repeal of Missouri Compro- 
mise, 146, 147. 

Birney, James G., nominated for presi- 
dent by Liberty party in 1843, 44 ; 
attacked by Seward, 46. 

Black, Jeremiah S., author of 
Buchanan's views on secession, 207; 
changes opinions and urges 
Buchanan to enforce laws in South 
Carohna, 208. 

Blair, Montgomery, accuses Seward of 
instigating DLxon to move repeal of 
Missouri Compromise, 123 ; falsity 
of his story, 129, 130; named for 
place in cabinet by Lincoln, 213; ob- 
jected to by Weed, 214; his nomina- 
tion offends Republicans, 226, 227 ; 
favors attempt to relieve Fort Sum- 
ter, 233, 234; says emancipation pro- 
clamation will lose election for Lin- 
coln, 336. 

Blockade, reasons for its employment 
in 1861, 268, 209; its success, 270. 

Border rufHans, in Kansas, 151, 154, 
155, 157. 

Boston, Whig society in, ignores Sew- 
ard, 135. 

Brooks, Preston 8., assaults Sumner, 
163; applauded by South, 164. 

Brown, John, his raid into Virginia, 
188. 

Buchanan, James, fails to get Demo- 
cratic nomination in 1852, 112; nom- 
inated in 1856, 147; his electoral and 
popular vote, 149; predicts Dred 
Scott decision in his inaugural, 168, 
172; denounced by Seward, 172; 
promises that any constitution 
framed for Kansas shall be sub- 
mitted to people, 173; unable to 
induce Walker to support Lecomp- 
ton Constitution, 175; defends his 
course regarding Kansas, 176; sub- 
mits Lecompton Constitution to 
Congress, 178, 179; denies Seward's 
charge of collusion with Taney, 180; 
bis course helps Republicans, 187; 



his situation in 1860, 206; his views 
on secession, 207; yields to Black's 
views and reconstructs cabinet, 208; 
his attitude keeps South from seiz- 
ing Washington, 210 ; injurious ef- 
fect of his attitude upon Europe, 
205, 273. 

Buck-tails, New York Republican fac- 
tion supporting Tompkins, 7. 

Bunch, British consul at Charleston, 
his dealings with Confederacy for 
England, 292, 293. 

Butler, General Benjamin F., applies 
term " contraband " to negroes, 334; 
his conduct at New Orleans com- 
plained of, 342; removed to please 
European powers, 343. 

Calhoun, John C, connected with 
anti-Masons, 14; offers resolutions 
on slavery in Territories, 61; in de- 
bate on compromise, 79, 91. 

California, gold craze in, 62; begin- 
nings of government, 63; adopts 
constitution, 63, 67 ; plan of South 
to secure as a slave State, 65; urged 
by Taylor to adopt a constitution, 
66; acts independently, 67 ; its ad- 
mission opposed by Soutli, 68; urged 
by Taylor, 77, 83; in compromise of 
1850, 78, 92; speech of Seward upon, 
83, 84; admitted to Union, 97. 

Cameron, Simon, fails to support Sew- 
ard at Republican convention, 200 ; 
his supporters won by Lincoln's 
managers, 201, 230; opposes at- 
tempt to provision Fort Sumter, 233. 

Campbell, Justice John A., accuses 
Seward of perfidious treatment of 
Southern commissioners, 238, 251- 
253; remains in office although a 
secessionist, 238, 2.39 ; hopes to pre- 
vent war by securing evacuation of 
Sumter, 239; his position not under- 
stood by Seward, 239, 241; wishes 
Seward to confer with commission- 
ers, 240 ; reports Seward's remarks 
to commissioners, 241 ; his action 
aids commissioners to gain time, 242 ; 
informs Davis that Seward author- 
ized him to announce evacuation of 
Sumter, 242-244 ; not justified in 
calling Seward's remark a promise. 



INDEX 



405 



243, 244; receives promise from Sew- 
ard of warning in case situation at 
Sumter is altered, 245, 246; secures 
more definite promise, 247, 248; 
again reassured by Seward, 250 ; 
accuses Seward of equivocation, 251 ; 
complains to Stanton, 252; discus- 
sion of his conduct, 252, 253. 
Canada, rebellion of 1837 in, 26, 27; 
Confederate raids from, in 1864, 354, 
355 ; refuses to surrender raiders, 
354; restores stolen property, 355. 
Caroline, burnt by Canadians, 26; 
apology for destruction of, refused 
by English, 27, 33. 
Cass, Lewis, connected with McLeod 
case, 29; nominated for president, 
49; on squatter sovereignty, 64; 
fails to gain renomination, 112; loses 
seat in Senate, 150. 
Chandler, Zachariah, reconciled by 
Seward with Davis, 177; votes to 
organize Territories without prohib- 
iting slavery, 221. 
Chase, Salmon P., signs appeal of In- 
dependent Democrats, 119; attacked 
by Douglas, 119 ; candidate for Re- 
publican nomination in 1856, 143; 
his name withdrawn, 145; candi- 
date for Republican nomination in 
1860, 200 ; named for Treasury De- 
partment, 213, 230; wishes Fort 
Sumter provisioned, 233, 234; ac- 
cepts Seward's view in Trent affair, 
306; disapproves of congressional 
attack on Seward, 333 ; resigns, 
then returns to his post, 333; disap- 
proves of emancipation proclama- 
tion, 336. 
Civil rights bill, 385. 
Clarendon, Lord, negotiates treaty for 
settlement of Alabama claims, 392. 
Clay, Henry, opposes anti-Masons, 13; 
defeated by Jackson, 13 ; supported 
in 1844 by Seward, 43, 45-47 ; at 
first opposes annexation of Texas, 
44, 46 ; later writes letter favoring, 
and thus ruins his chances of elec- 
tion, 47 ; refuses to support Taylor, 
73 ; offers compromise of 1850, 77, 
78 ; his speech, 79 ; on Seward's 
speech on compromise, 83 ; his 
statesmanship, 91 ; his measures 



first defeated, 92, 93 ; denounces 
agitation in 1851, 102. 

Clinton, De Witt, nominates Seward 
for surrogate, 6 ; supports Jackson 
in 1828, 6 ; leads faction of New 
York Republicans, 7, 8 ; his advo- 
cacy of Erie Canal, 22. 

Clintonians, Republican faction in 
New York, 7. 

Cobb, Howell, leaves Buchanan's cabi- 
net, 208. 

Collamer, Jacob, upholds Topeka Con- 
stitution of Kansas, 158, 159. 

Compromise of 1850 : questions at 
issue m 1849, 69, 70 ; Taylor's atti- 
tude toward, 76, 77 ; proposed by 
Clay, 77, 78 ; debate upon, in Sen- 
ate, 79-92 ; speech of Seward upon, 
84-90 ; reported in Omnibus bill, 
92; apparent defeat of, 92, 93; 
eventually passed after death of 
Taylor, 93, 94; does not represent 
any real common feeling of North 
and South, 94 ; fails to satisfy North, 
98, 99 ; upheld in congressional 
manifesto, 102, 105 ; announced as 
final by party conventions, 112 ; 
used to justify repeal of Missouri 
Compromise, 125. 

Confederate States of America, formed 
in 1861, 206, 231 ; sends commission- 
ers to treat with United States, 237; 
refused reception, 237 ; question of 
Seward's " perfidy " toward, 238- 
253 ; attempt of Campbell to pre- 
vent war with, 238-252 ; joined by 
Southern officers, 263 ; blockaded, 
269, 270; expects European recogni- 
tion, 272, 273 ; its apparent success 
satisfies Europe, 273, 274 ; prepares 
for war, 274 ; sends commissioners 
to negotiate for recognition, 276, 
277; recognized as belligerent by 
England, 279-287 ; by France, 282 ; 
declares war on the United States, 
284 ; issues letters of marque, 289, 
290; dealings of England with, re- 
garding Treaty of Paris, 291-293; 
military success in 1861, 296 ; sends 
Mason and Slidell as ministers, 297 ; 
its military successes in 1862, 324 ; 
project of France and England to 
recognize, 324, 325 ; collapses, 366. 



406 



INDEX 



ConstitutiOD, views as to its applica- 
tion to slavery in Territories, 70, 
71, 88 ; in relation to Missouri Com- 
promise, 117 ; in relation to recon- 
struction, 3CG, 367, 378-380, 388. 

Constitutional Union party, its origin 
and candidates, 193. 

Corwin, Thomas, in Fillmore's cabi- 
net, 93. 

Cowley, Lord, letter of Lord John 
Russell to, recognizing belligerency 
of Confederacy, 285. 

Crittenden, J. J., reconciles Wilson 
and Gwin , 177 ; opposes Lecomp- 
ton Constitution, 183 ; offers com- 
promise in 18G0, 215. 

Crittenden compromise, 215, 21G. 

Cuba, attempt to purchase, in 1858, 
187, 188. 

Curtis, Benjamin R., in Dred Scott 
case, 170, 171. 

Dallas, George M., remark of Lord 
John Russell to, 280, 282. 

Davis, Henry Winter, denounces Lin- 
coln for vetoing reconstruction bill, 
370. 

Davis, Jefferson, on divine origin of 
slavery, 88, 89 ; leads secession party 
in Mississippi, 105 ; persuades Pierce 
to favor Kansas-Nebraska bill, 118 ; 
on peaceable terms with Repub- 
licans, 177 ; offers resolutions em- 
bodying Dred Scott doctrine, 188 ; 
plots secession, 209 ; offers ultima- 
tum on slavery, 217 ; informed by 
Campbell of Seward's promise con- 
cerning Sumter, 242 ; sends com- 
missioners to negotiate for recogni- 
tion of Confederacy, 276 ; issues 
letters of marque, 283, 289 ; sends 
Mason and Slidell to Europe, 297. 

Democratic party, controls New York 
until 1838, 21 ; responsible for New 
Tork debt, 21, 22; advocates an- 
nexation of Texas, 44 ; nominates 
Cass, 49 ; approves Mexican war, 
50 ; on slavery, 64 ; divides on 
slavery question, 68 ; upholds final- 
ity of compromise, 112 ; nominates 
Pierce, 112 ; wins election of 1852, 
113, 114 ; again divides on slavery 
issue, 133 ; gams ground in election 



of 1855, 142 ; nominates Buchanan in 
1856, 147; carries election of 1856, 
149 ; attack of Seward upon, in 
" irrepressible conflict " speech, 186, 
187 ; adopts doctrine of non-inter- 
vention, 189; attacked as sectional 
by Seward, 191 ; again divides on 
slavery question in 1860, 193. 

Denver, James W., governor of Kan- 
sas, opposes Lecompton Constitu- 
tion, 179. 

Diplomatic history : Caroline case, 
27, 33; McLeod case, 27-33; mis- 
sion of Ashburton to United States, 
33 ; question of " intervention " in 
case of Hungary, 108-114 ; foreign 
policy of United States as inter- 
preted by Seward, 110, 111 ; Sew- 
ard's proposed vigorous policy in 
1861, 255-257 ; dispatch of Seward 
to ministers to counteract in Europe 
effect of Buchanan's message on 
secession, 265-267 ; danger of pro- 
test from Europe against a paper 
closure of Southern ports, 268, 269; 
question of recognition of Southern 
belligerency, 276-287 ; refusal of 
Seward to permit joint French and 
English action, 278 ; recognition of 
belligerency by England, 278-287 ; 
Adams's mission to English, 278- 
282 ; Seward's protest against Eng- 
land's action, 279 ; criticism of 
England's action, 280-287 ; refusal 
of United States to accede to Treaty 
of Paris, 288 ; attempt of Seward to 
secure accession of United States, 
289-291 ; mission of Bunch to Con- 
federate States, 292 ; negotiations 
over suspension of habeas corpus, 
293, 294 ; the Trent affair, 297-319 ; 
English view of international law, 
299 ; modification of English dis- 
patch by Prince Albert, 299; cau- 
tious attitude of Lincoln and Sew- 
ard, 301-303 ; English demand, 303- 
305 ; preparation of American reply, 
305-311 ; Seward's argument, 311- 
317; England's reply, 318, 319; 
result of episode upon international 
law, 319 ; efforts of Seward, by un- 
oflBcial emissaries, to affect Euro- 
pean opinion, 320, 322 ; danger of 



INDEX 



407 



English intervention, 323-326; offer 
and refusal of French mediation, 
325, 326 ; slave-trade treaty, 327 ; 
attitude of Seward regarding cap- 
tures at sea, 338, 339 ; question 
of foreign mails, 339, 340 ; difficul- 
ties regarding English and French 
privileges in passing blockade, 340 ; 
question of stopping Charleston har- 
bor, 340-342; difficulties arising 
from Butler's rule at New Orleans, 

342, 343 ; lack of complete neutral- 
ity on part of England and France, 

343, 344; difficulties over Confed- 
erate use of English ports, 345 ; 
dispute over building of Confed- 
erate cruisers, 345-353 ; question 
of the seizure of the Florida, 346 ; 
question of the sailing of the Ala- 
bama, 347-350 ; refusal of England 
to amend laws on subject, 350 ; 
agreement to arbitrate, 352, 353 ; 
complaints as to English aid to Con- 
federate cruisers, 353, 354; dealings 
with Canada concerning Confederate 
raids, 354, 355 ; refusal of Seward 
to join in alliance against Mexico, 
356, 357 ; dealings with France con- 
cerning Mexican expedition, 357- 
362; Seward's protest against estab- 
lishment of a monarchy by France, 
358, 359 ; dangers of war with 
France avoided, 360, 361 ; review 
of Seward's part in diplomatic his- 
tory, 362, 363 ; treaties made under 
Johnson, 391, 392 ; Johnson-Claren- 
don arbitration treaty, 392 ; pur- 
chase of Alaska, 393 ; attempt of 
Seward to purchase St. Thomas, 
393-395. 

Diplomatic service, appointments to, 
under Lincoln, 267, 268. 

District of Columbia, question of abo- 
lition in, 70 ; slave trade in, abol- 
ished, 78, 92, 98 ; abolition in, pro- 
hibited by Crittenden compromise, 
215. 

Disunion, danger of, denied by Seward, 
9, 89; threatened, in 1850, 76, 89, 90; 
attitude of Taylor toward, 94, 95 ; 
probably would have failed in 1850, 
95; dangers of, minimized by Sew- 
ard, 192; determined upon by South- 



ern leaders, 203-205 ; process of, 
205, 206 ; aided by administration of 
Buchanan, 206, 207; Buchanan's doc- 
trine of, 207 ; impossibility of peace- 
ful disunion, 211; consequences of, 
predicted by Seward, 219, 220, 222 ; 
optimistic view of Seward regard- 
ing, 222-225 ; evU effect of Buch- 
anan's message on, in Europe, 265, 
266. 

Dix, John A., in Buchanan's cabinet, 
209. 

Dixon, Archibald, said by Blair to 
have been instigated by Seward to 
move repeal of Missouri Compro- 
mise, 123 ; discussion of his motives, 
126, 127. 

Dodge, Henry, introduces bill to or- 
ganize Nebraska, 124. 

Douglas, Stephen A., reports bill to 
organize Nebraska, 117, 124 ; re- 
ports Kansas-Nebraska bill, 118, 
124 ; attacks Chase and Sumner, 
119 ; supported by Northern Demo- 
crats, 122 ; question of his being in- 
fluenced by Dixon, 126, 127; his 
motive in introducing Nebraska bill, 
127, 128; denounces Know-Nothings, 
138; condemns Emigrant Aid So- 
ciety, 158 ; proposes bill to settle 
Kansas dispute, 159 ; vituperated 
by Sumner, 163 ; discusses Kansas 
question with Buchanan, 177 ; hated 
by South, 177 ; denounces Lecomp- 
ton Constitution, 177, 178; his atti- 
tude praised by Seward, 178; dis- 
trusted by Republicans, 182; deter- 
mination of Southern Democrats to 
drive from party, 188; nominated 
for President by Democrats, 193. 

Dred Scott case, facts in, 168, 169; 
decision of Supreme Court in, 169- 
172; denounced by Seward, 179 ; 
question of its betrayal to Buch- 
anan, 179-181 ; its doctrines adopted 
by Democratic party, 189. 

Durfee, , killed in Caroline affair, 

27, 28. 

Education, in New York, 23. 
Emigrant Aid Society, established, 

152; attacked m Senate, 158, 159. 
England, declines to apologize for 



408 



INDEX 



burning of Caroline, 27; demands 
release of McLeod, 28, 29; visit of 
Kossuth to, IOC ; proposal of Seward 
to seek explanations from, 255 ; its 
sympathy expected by North, 272; 
upper classes in, rejoice at disunion, 
275; attempt of Confederacy to 
secure recognition from, 2TG, 277 ; 
accepts plan of France to act in 
concert, 277; recognizes Southern 
belligerency, 279; criticism of its 
action, 280-287 ; its real motives, 
285-287 ; naturally inclined to favor 
weaker party, 280, 287 ; effect of its 
action, 287 ; refuses to let United 
States accede to Treaty of Paris on 
its own terms, 289, 290 ; attempts 
negotiation with Confederacy over 
Treatyof Paris, 292, 293; refuses to 
apologize for Bunch's actions, 293; 
complains of arrests of British sub- 
jects, 293, 294; enraged at seizure 
of Trent, 298 ; prepares for war, 
298, 304; believes United States to 
have planned capture, 298, 299; de- 
mands reparation, 303-305 ; does 
not press for an apology, 304; ac- 
cepts surrender of prisoners, 318 ; 
considers possible intervention, 320, 
321, 323; declines France's propo- 
sal to mediate, 325; makes treaty 
to abolish slave trade, 327 ; protests 
against blocking Charleston harbor, 
340-342 ; effect of its neutrality pro- 
clamation upon South, 345 ; difficul- 
ties over Confederate use of its 
ports, 345 ; allows Confederate pri- 
vateers to be built in its ports, 345- 
353; refuses to amend its law on the 
subject, 350 ; detains later vessels, 
350 ; disclaims any responsibility, 
351, 352; later agrees to arbitration, 
352 ; joins with France and Spain 
against Mexico, 356 ; withdraws, 
357; by Johnson-Clarendon treaty 
agrees to arbitrate, 392. 

Erie Canal, a political issue in New 
York, 7, 22. 

Erie Railway, celebration over its com- 
pletion, 104. 

Everett, Edward, connected with anti- 
Masons, 14; nominated for vice- 
president, 193. ' 



Fessenden, W. p., regrets Seward's 
vote for Utah regiments, 185. 

Fillmore, Millard, nominated for vice- 
president, 49; becomes president, 
favors compromise, 93; opposed to 
Seward, 95, 96; proscribes Seward's 
friends, 97 ; his excursion over Erie 
Railway, 104; candidate of conser- 
vative Whigs for renomination, 112, 
113; candidate in 1856, his vote, 
149. 

Fish, Hamilton, elected to Senate, 101. 

Florida, admitted by South as balance 
to Iowa, Gl. 

Florida, career of the, 346. 

Floyd, John B., in Buchanan's cabi- 
net, 209. 

Foote, Henry S., leads Union party in 
Mississippi in 1851, 105. 

Forsyth, John, complains to British 
minister of Caroline affair, 27; de- 
clares inability to release McLeod, 
28. 

Fourteenth amendment, passed, 385. 

Fox, Captain G. V., ought to be cred- 
ited with success of navy during 
war, 231; plans to relieve Fort 
Sumter, 233, 234; his expedition 
fails, 235, 236; on plan to annex St. 
Thomas, 394. 

Fox, Henry S., declines to apologize 
for Caroline affair, 27; demands 
McLeod's release, 28; sends ultima- 
tum to Webster, 29. 

France, proposal of Seward to demand 
explanations from, 255-257; ex- 
presses friendly feelings before war 
of secession, 272; proposes to Eng- 
land and Russia to act in concert 
regarding the United States, 277; 
recognizes belligerency of Confed- 
eracy, 282; considers joint interven- 
tion with England, 320, 321 ; takes 
part of England in Trent affair, 322 ; 
declines to withdraw recognition 
of belligerency, 323 ; suggests joint 
mediation, 325; offers to mediate, 
325; difficulties with, arising from 
Butler's rule in New Orleans, 343; 
joins with England and Spain against 
Mexico, 350; aids monarchical party, 
357 ; plans to establish a monarchy 
in Mexico, 357 ; threatened by Sew- 



INDEX 



409 



ard, 359; asks whether United 
States wishes war, 360, 361; with- 
draws troops, 362. 

Freedman's bureau, 384, 385 . 

Freeman, , insane negro crim- 
inal, defended by Seward, 41-43. 

Free Soil party, nominates Van Buren 
and Adams, 49, 50; decides election 
in favor of Taylor, 50; members of, 
in Congress, injure their own cause, 
68; dislikes Seward, 135; wishes to 
form a new party, 136. 

Fremont, John C, movement to nom- 
inate in 1856, 143, 144; nominated 
by Republicans, 145; reasons for 
his popularity, 146, 147; defeated in 
1856, 149. 

Fugitive Slave Law, demanded by 
South, 70; proposed by Clay, 78, 92; 
speech of Seward upon, 85, 86; in 
Omnibus bill, 92 ; its passage enrages 
North, 98, 99, 100; attempts to en- 
force, 100, 101; opposition to, in 
North, 101; its actual working, 101, 
102; bill to make more rigorous, 
102; gradual decrease of excitement 
over, 105, 204; revision proposed in 
Crittenden compromise, 215; also 
by Seward, 216. 

Geast, John W., his career as gov- 
ernor of Kansas, 157; resigns, 172. 

Gilmer, Thomas W., refuses to sur- 
render a fugitive to New York, 37 ; 
resigns, 37 ; thought by Virginians a 
match for Seward in argument, 37. 

Grant, Ulysses S., expects a short 
war, 224. 

Greece, its recognition by England as 
belligerent considered by Russell a 
precedent in 1861, 281. 

Greeley, Horace, expects Whig nom- 
ination for governor in 1854, 140; 
angry with Seward for failing to 
aid him, 140, 141 ; becomes Seward's 
enemy, 141; his hostiUty surprises 
Seward, 144; works to defeat Sew- 
ard's nommation in 1860, 196-199; 
causes for his hatred of Seward, 
197 ; writes bitter letter to Seward, 
197, 198; conceals his enmity, 198; 
supports Bates in Republican con- 
vention, 198; rejoices at Seward's 



defeat, 199; publishes his letter of 
1854 to Seward, 199; disgusts Weed, 
199. 
Gwin, William M., reconciled by Sew- 
ard and others with WUson, 177. 

Habeas Corpus, suspension of, Sew- 
ard's connection with, 293-295. 

Hale, John P., deplores Seward's vote 
for Utah regiments, 185. 

Harrison, William Henry, connected 
with anti-Masons, 19 ; elected presi- 
dent, 29; in McLeod case, 29; ir- 
ritated by Seward's action, 32; 
refuses to consider possibility of 
Seward's entering his cabinet, 34. 

"Higher Law," Seward's statement 
of, 86-89. 

Holland Company, dealings of Seward 
with, 19. 

Holt, Joseph, in Buchanan's cabinet, 
209. 

House of Representatives, passes Kan- 
sas-Nebraska bill, 130; sectional or- 
ganization of, in 1855, 149 ; organiza- 
tion of, in 1856, 158; demands re- 
storation of Missouri Compromise, 
158; appoints committee to investi- 
gate Kansas troubles, 159; fails to 
punish Brooks, 103; report of its 
committee on Kansas, 166 ; passes 
bill to admit Kansas, 167 ; commit- 
tee of, on compromise in 1861, 217; 
votes Wilkes a gold medal, 300; 
passes resolution not to recognize 
monarchy in Mexico, 360. 

Houston, Samuel, favors each one of 
compromise measures, 94; votes 
against Kansas-Nebraska bill, 118. 

Hughes, Archbishop John, sent by 
Seward to France, 321. 

Hungary, revolt of, in 1849, 105, 106; 
crushed by Russia, 106; sympathy 
for, in England, 106: and in United 
States, 107-109. 

"Independent Democrats, " address 
of, against Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
118, 119; attacked by Douglas, 119. 

Internal improvements, not a party 
question in 1828, 17; craze for, in 
New York, 22, 23; advocated by 
Seward in 1852, 111, 112. 



410 



INDEX 



Intervention, question of, in case of 

Hungary, 106-111. 
Iowa, its admission refused by South 

unless together with Florida, 61 . 
"Irrepressible conflict," 186. 

Jackson, Andrew, supported by Clin- 
ton in 1828, 6; elected in 1832, 13; 
removes deposits from Bank, 13; 
reasons for his success, 17, 18 ; his 
theory of a popular mandate, 18; 
recommends punishing the circula- 
tion of anti-slavery documents in 
mail, 58. 

Jennings, , mother of Seward, 2; 

visits Niagara, 8. 

Johnson, Andrew, raises hopes of 
radicals upon succeeding Lincoln, 
374; his hatred for rebels, 374; fol- 
lows Lincoln's plan of reconstruc- 
tion, 374; considers States as never 
out of Union, 375; issues amnesty 
proclamation, 376; appoints pro- 
visional governors, 377, 378; his 
conditions to seceded States, 379; 
bases authority on war power, 379; 
said to have been changed by Sew- 
ard's influence, 381 ; this .assertion 
erroneous, 381, 382; intends to fol- 
low Lincoln, 382; why his plan 
failed, 382, 383; his message to 
Congress, 383; believes in loyalty 
of part of South, 384; opposes 
congressional reconstruction, 384; 
vetoes freedman's bureau bill, 385; 
vetoes other bills in vain, 385; ex- 
presses disapproval of fourteenth 
amendment, 386; disgusts people 
by offensive behavior, 386; vetoes 
reconstruction bill in vain, 387; his 
plan of reconstruction fails, 387; 
supported by Seward, 388, 389. 

Johnson, Herschel V., nominated for 
vice-president, 193. 

Johnson, Reverdy, negotiates treaty 
for settlement of Alabama claims, 
392. 

Kansas, struggle over organiiation of, 
151-190; sides in struggle over, 151 ; 
its possession as slave State con- 
sidered vital by South, 152; organ- 
ized immigration into i from North 



and South, 152, 153; first election 
of delegate in, 153; legislature of, 
elected by Missourians, 154; adopts 
Missouri statutes, 155; violence in, 
under Shannon, 155, 157; formation 
and destruction of free-state Topeka 
government in, 156; administration 
of Geary in, 157; policy of Pierce 
toward, 157, 158; affairs in, dis- 
cussed by Congress, 158-102; burn- 
ing of Lawrence in, 164; failure of 
attempts to admit, under a com- 
promise, 165-1G7 ; administration 
of Walker in, 172-175; free vote on 
constitution of, promised by Buch- 
anan, 173; election of convention 
and of legislature, 173, 174; Lecomp- 
ton Constitution urged upon, 174, 
175; Stanton's administration in, 
176; rejects Lecompton Constitu- 
tion, 176 ; attempt of Buchanan to 
force Lecompton Constitution upon, 
170, 178, 179; attitude of Douglas 
toward, 177, 178, 181; debate upon, 
in Senate, 178-183; rejects Lecomp- 
ton Constitution definitely, 184; its 
admission under Wyandot Constitu- 
tion debated in Senate, 190. 

Kansas-Nebraska bill, events leading 
up to, 116, 117, 124-126; introduced 
and passed, 118; denounced by "In- 
dependent Democrats," 118, 119; 
debate upon, 119; alleged responsi- 
bility of Seward for, 123-130; car- 
ried through House, 130. 

King, Thomas B., sent by Taylor to 
urge people of California to form a 
state government, 06, 07. 

Know-Nothing party, its principles 
and origin, 137; joined by Whigs, 
137, 138; influenced by anti-slavery 
members, 138; denounced by Doug- 
las, 138; attitude of Seward toward, 
139; in New York election, 139; 
carries New York and other States 
in 1855, 142; proposed fusion of, 
with Republican party, 142; op- 
posed by Seward, 143; members of, 
join Republican party, 145; its vote 
in 1856, 149; merges in Constitu- 
tional Union party, 193; members 
of, in Republican party, dislike 
Seward, 200. 



INDEX 



411 



Kossuth, visits United States, 105- 
109; flies to Turkey, 106; visits 
England, 106; wishes to gain help 
from England and Uiiited States, 
107; question of his reception, 107; 
applauded by anti-slavery element, 
108; fails to interest South, 108. 

Lafayette, Marqths de, visits New 
York in 1825, 6; visited by Seward, 
17. 

Lamon, Marshal Ward H., visits 
Charleston in 1861, 247. 

Lane, Joseph, nominated for vice- 
president, 193. 

Liberty party, nominates Birney, 44 ; 
holds balance of power in New York, 
45; appeal of Seward to, 45, 46. 

Lincoln, Abraham, meets Seward, his 
remark on slavery, 50; denounces 
Supreme Court for Dred Scott de- 
cision, 172 ; nominated for president 
in 1860, 194; his career, reasons for 
his nomination, 194, 195 ; how his 
nomination was secured, 201 ; offers 
Seward State Department, 213 ; 
visited by Weed, 213 ; his cabinet 
plans criticised by Weed, 213, 214 ; 
tries in vain to get a Southern mem- 
ber in cabinet, 226 ; offends Seward, 
227 ; refuses to accept his with- 
drawal, 228 ; seems undignified, 228; 
his cabinet heterogeneous, 229, 230; 
his perplexity over Sumter situa- 
tion, 232 ; asks opinions of officers 
and of cabinet, 232-234 ; decides to 
relieve both Sumter and Pickens, 
234, 235 ; notifies governor of South 
Carolina, 235 ; authorizes Seward 
to promise to warn South of any 
action regarding Sumter, 246 ; sends 
committee to investigate situation, 
247; Seward's "thoughts" for, 
254-258 ; does not regard them as 
an offer from Seward to assume re- 
sponsibility for administration, 259, 
261 ; continues on good terms with 
Seward, 261, 262 ; his inaugural ad- 
dress circulated by Seward in Eu- 
rope, 266 ; brought by Seward to 
consider fitness in diplomatic ap- 
pointments, 267 ; modifies Seward's 
instructions to Adams, 279; sus- 



pends writ of habeas corpus, 293 ; 
requests Seward's aid, 295; said to 
have forced Seward in Trent affair, 
306, 307; doubtfulness of story, 
308-310 ; doubtful what to do ivith 
prisoners, 308 ; thinks of arbitra- 
tion, 309 ; not proved to have con- 
sulted secretly with Seward, 309; 
really was reluctant to yield prison- 
ers, but yielded to Seward, 310 ; his 
mastery recognized by Seward, 332; 
requested by Republican senators 
to dismiss Seward, 332, 333 ; an- 
noyed at request, 333 ; refuses to 
accept resignations of Seward and 
Chase, 333; States' union to be ob- 
ject of war, 335, 336 ; submits eman- 
cipation proclamation to cabinet, 
336; adopts Seward's suggestion to 
wait until a victory, 336; his recon- 
struction theories, 360 ; issues am- 
nesty proclamation, 367; vetoes 
reconstruction act, 369 ; his rea- 
sons, 369, 370; denounced by Wade 
and Davis, 370; signs resolution ex- 
cluding South from electoral vote, 
370 ; opposes any inflexible plan of 
reconstruction, 371; his plans dis- 
cussed, 372, 373. 

Lossing, Benson J., on Lincoln's sup- 
posed position in Trent case, 307. 

Louisiana, reconstruction in, 367, 370. 

Lovejoy, Owen, votes to organize Ter- 
ritories without prohibiting slavery, 
221. 

Lyons, "Lord, describes Seward's op- 
timism in 1860, 222, 223 ; letters of 
Russell to, recognizing belligerency 
of Confederacy, 282, 285 ; shows 
caution after Trent affair, 303 ; pre- 
sents Russell's demand, 303, 305; 
his instructions, 304 ; directed to 
remonstrate against closing Charles- 
ton harbor, 341. 

McClellan, Geoege B., said to have 
told Seward that success in war 
with England was impossible, 302. 

Mcllvaine, Bishop Charles P., sent by 
Seward on a mission to England, 
322. 

McLean, John, candidate for Repub- 
lican nomination in 1856, 145. 



412 



INDEX 



McLeod, Alexander, boasts of killing 
Durfee in Caroline affair, 27, 28; 
arrested by New York, 28 ; his re- 
lease demanded by England, 28, 29 ; 
his discharge requested from Seward 
by Webster, 29 ; his trial insisted 
upon by New York, 30 ; defended 
by federal attorney, 30 ; acquitted, 
31. 

Madagascar, treaty with, 392. 

Marcy, William L., candidate for De- 
mocratic nomination in 1852, 112. 

Marshall, John, at national anti-Ma- 
sonic convention, 13, 14. 

Mason, James M., on slavery in Ter- 
ritories, 88 ; plots secession, 209 ; 
sent as Confederate minister to 
England, 297 ; captured by Wilkes, 
298 ; surrendered, 318. 

Massachusetts, auti-JIasons in, 12, 13. 

Mathew, Father, 76. 

Maximilian, elected Emperor of Mex- 
ico, 358 ; fails to obtain popular 
support, 3G1 ; futile attempt of 
Seward to save, 362. 

Mercier, M., advises Napoleon to re- 
cognize Confederacy and raise block- 
ade, 320. 

Mexico, war with, begun, 61 ; carried 
on mainly by South, 67 ; plans of 
France and Spain to invade, 256, 
257 ; alliance of Spain, England, 
and France against, 356 ; proposal 
of Seward to protect, 356 ; plan of 
Napoleon to erect a monarchy in, 
357, 358; elects Maximilian, 358; 
question of recognition of govern- 
ment of, by United States, 359-361 ; 
abandoned by France, 362 ; kills 
Maximilian, 362 ; visit of Seward to, 
399. 

Miller, Elijah, law partner of Seward, 
5, 6; visits Niagara with Seward, 8. 

Miller, Frances, marries Seward, 5 ; 
her death, 3G5. 

Mississippi, Union party in, defeats 
secessionists, 105. 

Missouri, emigrants from, enter Kan- 
sas, 153 ; sends illegal voters to 
carry Kansas elections, 153, 154, 155. 

Missouri Compromise, called " forgot- 
ten" by Seward in 1825, 9; cir- 
cumstances of its adoption, 115, 



116 ; regarded as sacred, 116 ; vio- 
lated in 1836, 116; validity of, ques- 
tioned by committee of Senate, 117; 
repeal moved, 118; debate upon, 
121, 122, 125-127; in Dred Scott 
case, 169-171; its revival no longer 
looked upon by Seward as necessary, 
181, 182; renewal proposed in Crit- 
tenden compromise, 215. 

Monroe doctrine, Seward's view of, 
110 ; in connection with French in- 
vasion of Mexico, 356, 358. 

Morgan, William, proposes to publish 
exposure of Masonry, 11 ; perse- 
cuted and murdered by Masons, 11, 
12. 

Motley, John L., on English recogni- 
tion of Southern belligerency, 286. 

Napoleon III., expresses cordiality 
toward United States, 272; proposes 
to act in concert with England in 
regard to Confederate States, 277 ; 
urged by Mercier to recognize Con- 
federacy and raise blockade, 320 ; 
prepared to aid England in Trent 
affair, 322 ; proposes joint interven- 
tion to England and Russia, 325; 
his Mexican scheme, 357 ; wishes to 
establish a monarchy while United 
States is occupied, 357 ; withdraws 
troops, 3G2. 

Navy, development of, during civil 
war, 338. 

Negro suffrage, Lincoln's attitude 
toward, 373 ; wisdom of, 373. 

Nelson, Judge John, with Campbell 
calls on Seward, 238, 239; dreads 
war, 240; does not consider Seward 
as having promised evacuation of 
Sumter, 244; ceases to aid Camp- 
bell, 245. 

New Mexico, question of slavery in, 
69, 92, 98. 

New York, visit of Lafayette to, 6; 
political parties in, after 1824, 7; 
National Republican party in, 10; 
origin of anti-Masonic party in, 11, 
12; campaign of 1832 in, 13; sena- 
torial career of Seward in, 15-17, 
19; election of 1834 in, 19; carried 
by Whigs, 21; Seward's career as 
governor of, 21-38; internal im- 



INDEX 



413 



provements in, 22, 23; education 
in, 23; spoils system in, 24-26; Mc- 
Leod case in, 28-31; controversy 
with United States, 30, 31; defeat 
of Whigs in, 39 ; decides election of 
1844, 45, 47; decides election of 
1848, 50, 55; campaign of Seward 
in, 50-52; elects Seward senator, 
65 ; Fillmore and Seward factions 
in, 90; campaign of 1854 in, 138- 
140; carried by Know-Nothings, 142. 

Nicaragua, treaty with, concerning 
canal, 391. 

North, its intention in 1825 to work 
for emancipation stated by Seward, 
10 ; its interpretation of squatter 
sovereignty, 64 ; reasons for its op- 
position to slavery extension, 71, 
72; disappointed at Webster's 7th 
of March speech, 80; enraged at 
Fugitive Slave Law, 98, 99, 100; 
meetings in, to uphold law, 100 ; 
resistance in, to law, 101; weary 
of slavery agitation in 1852, 114 ; 
alarmed at Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
127, 128; becomes consolidated in 
Congress of 1856, 149, 150; deter- 
mines to save Kansas for freedom, 
152 ; affected by Kansas outrages, 
162 ; enraged by assault on Sumner, 
164; its economic situation described 
by Seward, 190, 191 ; wishes to stop 
secession by concessions, 209 ; ex- 
pects European sympathy in war 
with South, 271 ; its slowness leads 
Europe to consider disunion suc- 
cessful, 273, 274; tour of Seward in, 
to urge a fresh call for troops, 327. 

North Carolina, reconstruction in, 377. 

Nott, Dr. Eliphalet, his relations with 
Seward while at Union College, 3. 

Ohio, Seward's tour in, during cam- 
paign of 1848, 51. 

Palmebston, Lord, threatens war in 
case McLeod is executed, 28, 29; 
refuses an apology for Caroline case, 
33; disapproves Russell's proposal 
to intervene with France between 
North and South, 321; agrees in 
1862 to intervene, 324. 

Peace Congress of 1861, 217. 



Pickens, Francis W., interview of 
Lamon with, 247 ; expects Sumter 
to be evacuated, 247; asks commis- 
sioners for information, 247; pro- 
mised a warning by Lincoln, 247, 
248, 250. 

Pickens, Fort, its successful relief, 
234, 236. 

Pierce, Franklin, nominated for pre- 
sident, 112; elected, 113, 114; his 
first message, 115 ; persuaded to 
favor Kansas-Nebraska bill, 118; ap- 
points Reeder governor of Kansas, 
153 ; replaces him by Shannon, 155 ; 
calls free-state organization trea- 
sonable, 150 ; replaces Shannon by 
Geary, 157; his policy condemned, 
157, 158 ; denounced by Seward, 160, 
161, 166. 

Polk, James K., nominated for presi- 
dent in 1S44, 44 ; orders Taylor to 
invade Mexico, 01 ; urges Congress 
to organize Territories, 62. 

Popular sovereignty in Territories, 
doctrine of, announced by Cass, 64; 
different interpretations of, 64. 

Porter, Admiral David D., on annexa- 
tion of St. Thomas, 394. 

Postage, cheap, efforts of Seward to 
secure, 104. 

Protection, attempt of Whigs to make 
a party question in 1832, 18. 

Prussia, naturahzation treaty with, 
391. 

Pugh, George E., votes against Davis's 
resolutions on slavery, 189. 

Raymond, Henry J., defeats Greeley 
for Whig nomination for governor, 
140. 

Reconstruction, Lincoln's plan of, 366- 
368, 371 ; first congressional bill for, 
passed, 368, 309; Lincoln's veto, 
309, 370 ; controversy between Con- 
gress and Lincoln over, 369, 370; 
possibility of success of Lincoln's 
plan, 371-373; Johnson's plan of, 
374-377, 381-384; carried out by 
Johnson, 377 ; congressional theory 
of, 380; controversy between John- 
son and Congress over, 384-388; 
passage of freedman's bureau act 
over veto, 380; passage of civil rights 



414 



INDEX 



act and fourteenth amendment. 

385, 380; of congressional bill for. 

386, 387; failure of Johnson's plan 
of, 387; completion of, under con- 
gressional scheme, 387, 388 ; Sew- 
ard's attitude toward, 388-390. 

Reeder, Andrew H., governor of Kan- 
sas, his career, 153-155; removed 
by Pierce, 155; petitions for seat as 
territorial delegate, 159. 

Republican party, of Jefferson, its 
divisions in 1824, 7. 

RepubUcan party, proposed in 1854, 
133; formed in Northern States, 134; 
slower to form in East, 134; gains 
strength in 18.55, 141; proposed al- 
liance of, with Know-Nothings, 142, 
143 ; holds national conventions, 
143-145; candidates for its nomina- 
tion, 143, 144; nominates Fremont, 
145; not as advanced in anti-slavery 
principles as Seward, 145, 146; rea- 
sons for its nomination of Fremont, 
146, 147 ; discouraged by Democratic 
nomination of Buchanan, 147; its 
vote in 1850, 149, 150; its position 
in Kansas struggle, 151, 105; embit- 
tered by Dred Scott decision, 171; 
gains ground in Congress of 1856- 
57, 176, 177 ; loses in 1857, 180; 
aided by Buchanan's mistakes in 
1858, 187 ; ignores Davis's non-in- 
tervention resolutions, 189; de- 
fended by Seward from charge of 
sectionalism, 191, 192; its national 
convention of 1860, 193-202; nomi- 
nates Lincoln over Seward, 194 
reasons for its nomination, 194, 195 
Seward its real leader, 195, 196 
Greeley's intrigues in, against Sew- 
ard, 196-199 ; elements in, opposed 
to Seward, 199, 200; bargains of 
Lincoln's managers to secure its 
nomination, 201 ; its campaign in 
1860, 202 ; factions of, conciliated 
by Lincoln's cabinet, 213-215, 220- 
229; fears prevention of Lincoln's 
inauguration, 217 ; members of, dis- 
trust Seward, 328; angered by Sew- 
ard's language, 330; considers Sew- 
ard responsible for failures of war, 
331, 332; attempt to force Lincoln 
to dismiss cabinet, 332, 333. 



Riley, General Bennett, his position 
as military governor of California, 
63 ; calls a convention, 03, 64 ; not 
instructed by Taylor, nor aided by 
King, 60, 67. 

Rush, Richard, connected with anti- 
Masons, 14. 

Russell, Lord John, letter of Lyons to, 
222 ; on effectiveness of blockade, 
270; announces intention to wait 
for Adams before determining at- 
titude of Great Britain, 276, 280; 
recognizes belligerency of Confed- 
eracy before arrival of Adams, 278, 
280 ; refers to recognition of Greece 
as precedent, 281 ; his apparent bad 
faith, 282 ; explanation of his haste, 
282-286 ; does not advance blockade 
as pretext, 284; possibly influenced 
by Southern free-trade offers, 284, 
285; prevents accession of United 
States to Treaty of Paris, 290; criti- 
cises suspension of habeas corpus as 
unconstitutional, 293 ; his demand 
in Trent case, 303-305 ; understands 
United States to claim right of 
search, 313, 314 ; denies that ambas- 
sadors are contraband of war, 319; 
suggests joint intervention with 
France to end blockade, 320, 321; 
agrees in 1862 to intervene, 324 ; 
remonstrates against proposed clos- 
ing of Charleston harbor, 341 ; will- 
ing to amend foreign enlistment 
act, 350; reconsiders matter, 350; 
disclaims any responsibility for 
losses from Confederate cruisers, 
3.52; compliments Seward's ability, 
362. 

Russell, Dr. W. H., correspondent of 
" London Times," on cautious recep- 
tion of Trent affair by State Depart- 
ment, 301. 

Russia, crushes Hungarian rebellion, 
106 ; denounced by Seward, 108 ; 
proposal of Seward to seek explana- 
tions from, 255; declines to act in 
concert with England and France, 
277, 325. 

St. Thomas, attempt of Seward to 

purchase, 393-395. 
San Domingo, revolution in, 256. 



INDEX 



415 



Scott, Sir William, on status of ene- 
mies' ambassadors, 315. 
Scott, General Winfield, candidate of 
anti-slavery Whigs, 112; nominated 
for president, 113; defeated, 113, 
114 ; believes it impossible to relieve 
Fort Sumter, 232 ; advises abandon- 
ment of Fort Pickens, 234. 
Seaton, WilliamW., interviews Seward 
as to quarrels in cabinet, 327, 328. 
Secession. See Disunion. 
Senate, debate in, over slavery in Ter- 
ritories, and compromise of 1850, 
77-98; debate in, over Kansas-Ne- 
braska bill, 116-132; debates Kan- 
sas troubles, 158-163 ; investigates 
Brooks assault on Sumner, 163; 
debates and passes bill for a new 
organization of Kansas, 165-167; 
debates Lecompton Constitution, 
177-183; controlled by Buchanan, 
183; debates Davis's non-interven- 
tion resolution, 188-190 ; cowed by 
Southern senators in 1861, 212; 
debates Crittenden compromise, 
215, 216 ; rejects Seward's compro- 
mise, 217, 218; opposition in, to 
Seward, 328, 330-333; disapproves 
of Lincoln's amnesty proclamation, 
368 ; rejects Johnson - Clarendon 
treaty, 392. 
Seward, F. W., on Seward's reticence 

in Trent affair, 302. 
Seward, John, grandfather of W. H. 

Seward, his career, 1. 
Seward, Samuel S., father of W. H. 
Seward, his career, 1; refuses to 
pay his son's debts, 3, 4 ; ensaged at 
his leaving college to teach, 4; aids 
him to begin law practice, 5 ; his 
political views, 7; visits Niagara, 8; 
goes with his son to Europe, 17. 
Seward, William Henry, his career 
summarized, v-viii ; birth and an- 
cestry, 1,2; education, 2 ; his home 
duties, 2; slightly priggish, 2, 3; 
extravagant in dress at college, 
3 ; runs away to Savannah, 3, 4 ; 
teaches in Georgia, 4 ; studies law, 
4 ; returns to college, 4 ; admitted 
to bar, 5; begins successful prac- 
tice, 5 ; marries Miss Miller, 5 ; his 
first case, 5, 6; nominated by Clin- 



ton for surrogate, 6; favors Adams 
for president and loses nomination, 
6; in militia, 6, 7. 
New York Political Leader. A 
Buck-tail in politics, 7 ; denounces 
Erie Canal, 7 ; abandons party 
and supports Clinton, 8 ; visits Ni- 
agara, meets Weed, 8 ; publishes at- 
tack on Albany Regency, 8; on 
impossibility of sectional parties, 9, 
10 ; presides over convention in sup- 
port of Adams, 10; joins anti-Ma- 
sons, 10, 11 ; attends national con- 
vention, 12, 13 ; visits Boston, 12 ; 
meets Adams, 13 ; his reasons for 
joining anti-Masons, 15 ; elected to 
State Senate, 15 ; his career during 
term, 16, 17 ; visits Europe, 17 ; 
Whig candidate for governor, 19 ; 
returns to legal practice, 19 ; deals 
with settlers on Holland Company 
lands, 19, 20 ; elected governor, 20, 
21. 

Governor of New York. Urges 
public education, 23 ; stirs opposi- 
tion by urging simplification of legal 
procedure, 24 ; favors charities, 24 ; 
his pardons, 24 ; follows spoils sys- 
tem in appointments, 24, 25 ; keeps 
temper when opposed by legislature, 
26 ; declines to interfere in McLeod 
case, 30 ; objects to appearance of 
U. S. attorney for McLeod, 30; 
charged with collusion with federal 
government, 31 ; irritated by treat- 
ment of Whig administration, 32 ; 
question of his rejection by Harrison 
for cabinet position, 33, 34 ; refuses 
to deliver to Virginia agent persons 
aiding fugitive slaves, 35 ; his letter 
discussing law of extradition, 36 ; 
praised by Adams, 37 ; displeases 
conservative Whigs, 37 ; refuses to 
transmit resolution of legislature 
denouncing slave-stealing, 38. 
In Private Life. Thinks political 
career closed, 37 ; resumes success- 
ful practice of law, 40 ; in Freeman 
murder case, 41-43 ; declines politi- 
cal nominations, 43 ; labors in 1844 
to induce anti-slavery men to sup- 
port Clay, 45 ; his arguments, 45, 
46 ; depressed by Clay's Alabama 



416 



INDEX 



letter, 47 ; rises in esteem of Whigs, 
47, 48 ; declines nomination to Con- 
stitutional convention, 48 ; predicts 
Taylor's nomination, 48 ; hopes that 
Barnburners will divide Democratic 
vote, 49; fears evil consequences 
from election of Fillmore, 49 ; labors 
in campaign of 1848, 50, 51 ; his 
speech on the Western Reserve, 51- 
54; not an effective speaker, 54,55; 
elected United States senator, 55 ; 
review of his connection with, and 
leadersliip in, Whig party, 55-CO ; 
on Southern demands, 58 ; coura- 
geous in expressing opinions, 59 ; his 
share in building up anti-slavery 
sentiment, 59, 60. 

United States Senator. Approves 
of Taylor's message to California, 
66 ; gains influence over Taylor, 74, 
75 ; his friendship hurts Taylor with 
conservatives, 75 ; his share in slav- 
ery debates, 76 ; abused by Southern 
senators, 82 ; his defense, 82 ; his 
speech on the compromise measures, 
83-87 ; his statement about " Higher 
Law " not novel, 87-89; not alarmed 
by threats of disunion, 89, 90 ; ex- 
pects gradual abolition of slavery, 
90 ; summary of his position as to 
slavery, 91 ; loses influence with 
Taylor's death, 95 ; unfriendly with 
Fillmore, 95, 96 ; his friends pro- 
scribed by Fillmore, 97 ; indorsed 
by New York state convention, 97 ; 
repudiates charge of seeking agita- 
tion, 103 ; on postal system, 104 ; 
makes excursion over Erie Railway 
with Fillmore, 104 ; otfers resolu- 
tion of welcome to Kossuth, 107 ; 
offers resolution denouncing Russia, 
108 ; his speech favoring interven- 
tion, 109-111 ; rashness of his pro- 
posed policy. 111 ; in committee on 
commerce, 111 ; advocates govern- 
ment aid, 112 ; disappointed at Whig 
platform in 1852, 113 ; predicts de- 
feat of Scott, 113 ; does not sign 
address of " Independent Demo- 
crats," 119 ; makes speeches on 
Kansas-Nebraska bill, 119, 121, 122 ; 
their effect, 120, 121 ; discouraged 
at sitxtation, 122, 123 ; said by Blair 



to have instigated DLion to move 
repeal of Missouri Compromise, 123, 
124 ; falsity of story shown, 124-130; 
his comments on bill show inno- 
cence, 126, 127, 130 ; shows depres- 
sion in final speech, 131, 132 ; op- 
poses national anti-slavery organi- 
zation in 1854, 134 ; unpopular with 
conservative Whigs, 135 ; neglected 
in Boston, 135 ; describes his em- 
barrassing situation between Whig 
and Free Soil parties, 13G ; takes no 
part in campaign of 1854, 139 ; cau- 
tion of his conduct justified, 139 ; 
reelected senator, 140 ; beginning 
of Greeley's enmity toward, 140, 
141 ; favors Republican movement 
in 1855, 141 ; refuses to share in 
any coalition with Know-Nothings, 
143 ; his possible presidential can- 
didacy, 143, 144 ; dreads action of 
Republican convention, 144 ; sur- 
prised at Greeley's behavior, 144 ; 
satisfied with Republican platform, 
145 ; not likely to have secured 
nomination in any case, 145, 146; 
considers Buchanan a strong can- 
didate, 147 ; his labors in campaign, 
148 ; on possession of government 
by slaveholders, 148 ; on nature of 
conflict, 148, 149 ; proposes admis- 
sion of Kansas under Topeka Consti- 
tution, 159-161 ; denounces Pierce, 
IGO, IGl ; moves for committee to 
investigate assault on Sumner, 163; 
on effect of assault on Northern 
feeling, 164 ; on Douglas's bill to 
regulate Kansas, 166 ; denounces 
Dred Scott decision, 172 ; gratified 
at growing strength of Republicans 
in Senate, 177 ; on Douglas's posi- 
tion against the Lecompton Consti- 
tution, 178 ; rejoices in Douglas's 
aid, 178 ; accuses Buchanan and 
Taney of conspiracy, 179; denounced 
by them, 179, 180 ; willing to let re- 
peal of Missouri Compromise stand, 
181, 182 ; his speech not one of his 
best, 182, 183 ; favors raising regi- 
ments to punish Mormons, 184 ; de- 
nounced by Repubhcans, 185 ; his 
policy toward Utah justified, 185, 
186 ; asserts an " irrepressible con- 



INDEX 



417 



flict " between freedom and slavery, 
186 ; denounces Democratic party 
as pro-slavery, 186; urges passage 
of homestead bill, 187, 188 ; visits 
Europe, 188 ; his speech urging ad- 
mission of Kansas under Wyandot 
Constitution, 190-192 ; on history 
of Democratic and Whig parties, 
190, 191 ; defends Republican party 
from charge of sectionalism, 191, 
192 ; minimizes danger of disunion, 
192 ; his nomination by Republican 
National Convention expected, 194 ; 
his real leadership of Republicans, 
195 ; opinion of South concerning, 
195, 196 ; reasons for his failure to 
secure nomination, 196-201; accused 
by Greeley of treachery in 1854, 
197; regrets Greeley's anger, 198; 
remains on friendly terms vrith 
Greeley, 198 ; labors of Greeley 
against, 199 ; his supposed radical- 
ism the real cause of his failure to 
be nominated, 199, 200 ; disliked by 
old Whigs, Free Soilers, and Know- 
Nothings, 200 ; relies on Weed's 
management, 201 ; writes paragraph 
for press approving Lincoln's nomi- 
nation, 201; although disappointed, 
takes part in campaign, 202 ; sup- 
posed to have inspired Weed's arti- 
cle urging conciliation in 1861, 211 ; 
in reality simply drifts with events, 
212 ; doubts possibility of concilia- 
tion by constitutional amendment, 
212 ; invited to enter Lincoln's cabi- 
net, 213 ; confers with Weed, 213, 
215 ; accepts nomination, 215 ; on 
committee to consider Crittenden 
compromise, 215 ; offers compro- 
mise resolutions, 216, 217 ; his 
speech on benefits of union, 219, 
220 ; calls slavery in Territories no 
longer a practical question, 220; 
denounced for abandoning princi- 
ples, 221 ; defends his course, 221, 
222; his hopes described by Lord 
Lyons, 222 ; thinks time will soon 
bring a reconciliation, 223. 
Secretary of State. Does not ob- 
ject to Blair in the cabinet, 226 ; 
decUnes State Department, 227, 228; 
Lincoln's comment upon, 228 ; not 



trying to coerce Lincoln, 229 ; 
agrees to take office, 229 ; opposes 
attempt to provision Sumter, 233 ; 
his responsibility for failure of at- 
tempt, 235 ; files memorandum giv- 
ing reasons for refusing to receive 
Confederate commissioners, 237, 
238 ; accused of perfidy by South, 
238 ; visited by Judges Campbell ' 
and Nelson, 238 ; ignorant of Camp- 
bell's position, 239 ; wishes to avoid 
bloodshed in order to retain border 
States, 240 ; urged by Campbell to 
write to commissioners, 240 ; de- 
clines to do so, 241 ; said by Camp- 
bell to have promised evacuation of 
Sumter, 241-243 ; his statement un- 
guarded, but not a promise, 243 ; 
does not think of Campbell as repre- 
senting South, 244 ; visited again 
by Campbell, 245 ; authorized by 
Lincoln to promise to warn Camp- 
bell of any attempt to relieve Sum- 
ter, 245-248 ; repeats promise in 
April, 250 ; refuses to answer Camp- 
bell's charge of double-dealing, 251, 
252; led by optimism to be indis- 
creet, but not deceitful, 252, 253; 
submits " Thoughts for the Presi- 
dent's Consideration," 254, 255; 
deprecates further delay in adopt- 
ing a policy, 254; wishes to put 
issue of union or disunion in place 
of slavery, 254, 255 ; urges a vigo- 
rous foreign policy, 255 ; demands 
that some one assume responsibility, 
255 ; this letter unknown for a quar- 
ter of a century, 255, 256 ; malign 
interpretation of his position, 256 ; 
aware of revolution in San Domingo, 
256 ; learns of Napoleon's Mexican 
schemes, 256 ; wishes to prevent 
these by a bold front, 257 ; does 
not urge war with England or Rus- 
sia, 257; does not mean war, but 
peace, with Prance and Spain, 258; 
does not offer to assume Lincoln's 
responsibilities, 258, 259 ; later takes 
responsibility of arbitrary arrests, 
259 ; merely means to offer entire 
assistance, 259; his reference to 
matters outside his province refers 
merely to sending agents, 260 ; bel- 



418 



INDEX 



ligerent interpretation of letter con- 
tradicted by Seward's whole career, 
261 ; not regarded as presumptuous 
by Lincoln, 261, 262 ; continues on 
good terms with Lincoln, 262 ; de- 
scribes to Adams the collapse of 
administration at Washington and 
in South, 263-265 ; sends circular to 
foreign representatives, 266 ; urges 
importance of union, 266, 267; de- 
sires ability in diplomatic service, 
267 ; finds it hard to persuade Lin- 
coln, 267 ; secures appointment of 
Adams to England, 267, 268; advo- 
cates blockade of South, 269 ; his 
knowledge of Europe, 275, 276 ; 
alarmed at Napoleon's proposal to 
act in concert with England, 277 ; 
notifies ministers not to recognize 
any joint action, 278; refuses to re- 
ceive English and French ministers 
together, 278 ; angered at English 
recognition of Southern belliger- 
ency, 279, 286; his fiery dispatch 
modified by Lincoln, 279 ; instructs 
ministers to negotiate for accession 
of United States to treaty of 1856, 
289 ; approves Adams's course in 
refusing to sign on Russell's terms, 
290, 291 ; his reasons for proposing, 
290; on England's reasons for im- 
posing terms on accession of United 
States, 291; protests against Eng- 
lish negotiations with Confederacy 
through Bunch, 292, 293; declines 
to discuss question of habeas corpus 
with Russell, 294; called a tyrant, 
294 ; not oflScious in assuming charge 
of these matters, 295 ; alarmed at 
effect of Federal defeats upon Eu- 
rope, 296; said by Welles and others 
to have rejoiced at capture of Mason 
and SUdell, 301; in reality refuses 
from outset to commit himself, 
301, 302; consults McClellan as to 
chances in a war with England, 302 ; 
in dispatches to Adams refrains 
from committing himself, 302, 303; 
evidently foresees danger, 303 ; re- 
ceives British demands, 303, 305; 
studies the case, 305 ; reads reply 
to cabinet, 305, 306 ; comments of 
Bates and Chase upon, 306; said to 



have been led by Lincoln, 306, 307; 
no foundation for story, 309; his 
own statement of Lincoln's reluc- 
tance to yield the prisoners, 310 ; 
his technical argument, 310-318; 
disclaims right of search, 319 ; holds 
that ambassadors are lawful contra- 
band of war, 314, 315; admits error 
of Wilkes's method, 316, 317 ; dreads 
offers of mediation from Europe, 
320; sends unofficial agents to Eu- 
rope, 321, 322 ; sends optimistic ac- 
counts of situation to ministers, 323 ; 
tries to persuade Europe to with- 
draw recognition of belligerency, 
323 ; refuses French offer of media- 
tion, 325, 326; rejoices at treaty with 
England to extirpate slave trade, 
327 ; visits leading men to 'induce 
governors to urge a fresh call for 
troops, 327; visited by Seaton, 327; 
asserts his own harmony with Lin- 
coln, 32S; understands attitude of 
his enemies, 328; refuses to resign, 
328 ; exasperated at quarrels in 
Congress, 329; condemns extrem- 
ists, 329 ; wiUing that slavery ques- 
tion should wait, 330; angers radicals 
by dispatch to Adams, 330 ; held 
responsible by Republican senators 
for failures of war, 331, 332 ; recog- 
nizes Lincoln's mastery, 332 ; his 
removal urged by Republican lead- 
ers, 332, 333 ; sends Lincoln his re- 
signation, 333 ; returns to post, 333 ; 
suggests withholding of emancipa- 
tion proclamation until after some 
victory, 336; willing to make con- 
cessions of belligerent rights to con- 
ciliate Europe, 338; admits for- 
warding of captured mails as matter 
of expediency, 339 ; permits French 
to leave New Orleans, 340 ; protests 
against English violation of block- 
ade, 340; his reply to Russell's pro- 
test against blocking Charleston 
harbor, 341, 342; harassed by com- 
plaints of French against Butler, 
343; urges Adams to prevent en- 
listment of Confederate privateers 
in England, 348; complains of Eng- 
lish decision in Alexandria case, 
349 ; suggests amendments to law, 



INDEX 



419 



350 ; lays down general lines of 
Adams's policy, 352; complains of 
assistance to Confederate cruisers 
in English colonies, 353 ; fails to 
secure extradition of Canadian raid- 
ers, 354; declines to join in treaty 
of 1861 with regard to Mexico, 
356 ; states Monroe doctrine, 356 ; 
accepts statements of French gov- 
ernment, 358 ; protests against es- 
tablishment of Maximilian's gov- 
ernment, 358, 359 ; refuses to re- 
cognize Maximilian, 359 ; fears a 
combination of maritime powers to 
intervene, 359, 360 ; wishes to avoid 
war veith France, 360 ; calms French 
resentment at resolutions of Con- 
gress, 361; refuses after fall of 
Confederacy to threaten France, 
362; tries in vain to rescue Maxi- 
milian, 362 ; character of his dis- 
patches, 362 ; general survey of his 
diplomacy, 362, 363; attempt to as- 
sassinate in 1865, 364 ; loses health, 
364, 365 ; loses wife and daughter, 
365 ; continues in office, 365. 

Secretary of State — Johnson. Said 
to have induced Johnson to insert 
pardon clause in amnesty proclama- 
tion, 377 ; said to have gained in- 
fluence over Johnson, 381 ; agrees 
with Johnson's theory of recon- 
struction, 388, 389 ; thinks course 
of Congress unconstitutional, 389 ; 
his optimistic view of results of 
war, 389, 390 ; remains in cabinet 
to conclude diplomatic questions, 
390, 391; makes treaties, 391, 392 ; 
connected with Johnson-Clarendon 
treaty, 392 ; secures purchase of 
Alaska, 393 ; wishes to purchase 
St. Thomas, 393, 394 ; resigns office, 
395. 

Last Years. Travels in America 
and around world, 395 ; last days 
and death, 395 ; his private life and 
character, 395, 396 ; his political 
consistency, 396-398 ; a consistent 
Whig, 396 ; his opposition to slavery, 

396, 397 ; scrupulous fairness to 
Catholics, 397 ; fairness in politics, 

397, 398; attacked for remaining 
in Johnson's cabinet, 398 ; his activ- 



ity of mind, 399 ; his enthusiastic 
welcome in Mexico, 399 ; in Japan, 
399 ; in China, 400 ; his last years 
happy, 400. 

Personal Traits. Absence of vin- 
dictiveness, 53, 54, 389, 397 ; ambi- 
tion, 55, 143, 202; coolness, 26, 302; 
courage, 41-43, 365, 397 ; diplomatic 
abaity, 362, 363 ; fidelity, 229, 258- 
260, 294, 328, 332 ; incautiousness, 
36, 241, 329 ; industry, 396 ; leader- 
ship, 195, 196 ; legal abiUty, 6, 19, 
40, 42, 310, 311; literary abUity, 
362; optimism, 222-224, 252, 323, 
390 ; personal appearance, 16, 54 ; 
pride, 227, 228 ; private life, 395 ; 
unfavorable views of, 34, 39, 42, 82, 
200, 221, 243, 331, 398. 
Political Opinions. Anti-Masons, 
11, 13, 15 ; blockade, 269, 339-341 ; 
California, admission of, 84; Caro- 
line case, 30, 33 ; colonies, 393 ; 
compromise of 1850, 84-87 ; com- 
promise in 1861, 211, 212, 215-217 ; 
disunion, 9, 16, 51, 89, 90, 218, 219, 
222, 254 ; education, sectarian, 23, 
397; emancipation, 253, 336, 396, 
397 ; England, policy toward, 278, 
279, 286, 289, 292, 322, 348, 349; 
foreign policy in 1861, 255-262; 
France, policy toward, 278, 289, 
321, 325, 326, 342, 343, 358-362; 
Fugitive Slave Law, 85 ; higher law, 
86 ; imprisonment for debt, 16; in- 
ternal improvements, 22, 104, 112; 
intervention, 108-111 ; irrepressi- 
ble confUct, 51, 131, 148, 182, 183, 
186, 190, 191 ; Kansas troubles, 160, 
161, 179, 182, 190, 220; Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, 121-124, 126, 127, 129, 
130, 131, 132 ; Know-Nothings, 139, 
143; Monroe doctrine, 110, 356, 
358-361; paper money, 57; political 
parties, 9, 25 ; protection, 57, 111 ; 
reconstruction, 388-390 ; Republi- 
can party, 135, 178, 191 ; slavery, 
35-38, 46, 52, 59, 87, 131, 220, 396; 
spoils system, 24, 25, 267 ; Sumter, 
Fort, relief of, 233, 239-253 ; Texas, 
annexation of, 45-47 ; third parties, 
35, 46, 51 ; Trent affair, 301-319 ; 
Whig party, 6, 7, 10, 19, 35, 43, 52, 
56-60, 136, 191, 396. 



420 



INDEX 



Shannon, Wilson, his career as gov- 
ernor of Kansas, 155. 

Shenandoah, career of the, 351. 

Slavery, its position in United States 
according to Seward, 51-54 ; be- 
comes a political question, 58-CO ; 
Calhoun's resolutions on, CI, G2; 
question of its existence in Terri- 
tories, 6G-70, 80 ; held by South to 
be specially protected by Constitu- 
tion, 71 ; its absolute security and 
protection demanded by South as 
condition of continuing in Union, 
218, 219 ; its existence iu Territories 
no longer considered a question by 
Seward, 220 ; attitude of Union 
armies to, raises a problem, 333, 
334 ; demand for its abolition, 334 ; 
objections to emancipation procla- 
mation, 335, 33G ; Lincoln's emanci- 
pation proclamation delayed at Sew- 
ard's suggestion, 33G, 337. 

Slemmer, Lieutenant Adam J., saves 
Fort Pickens, 20G. 

Slidell, John, plots secession, 209 ; 
sent as minister to France, 297 ; cap- 
tured by Wilkes, 298 ; surrendered, 
318. 

Slidell, Miss, informs English minis- 
try that Wilkes acted without or- 
ders, 209. 

Smith, Caleb B., gives vote of Indiana 
delegation to Lincoln in 1800, 201 ; 
named for Lincoln's cabinet, 230 ; 
opposes provisioning Fort Sumter, 
233. 

South, impossibility of its secession 
stated by Seward, 9, 10 ; unpopular- 
ity of Seward in, 35 ; adopts definite 
policy of pro-slavery, 01 ; insists on 
equality with free States, 01 ; its 
interpretation of squatter sover- 
eignty, 04 ; plans to secure Califor- 
nia as slave State, 05; unable to 
compete with North in settlement, 
65 ; intends Mexican war to secure 
its future predominance, 07 ; op- 
poses admission of California, OS ; 
its views as to slavery in Territories 
under Constitution, 70, 71, 88; rea- 
sons for its political headship, 72 ; 
its demands denounced by Seward, 
85 J not believed by Seward to be 



sincere in threatening secession, 90 ; 
attacks Omnibus bill, 92 ; bitterness 
of Taylor against, 94; dislikes Kos- 
suth's appeal, 107, 108 ; makes im- 
mediate gains by Missouri Compro- 
mise, 115, 110 ; later wishes to over- 
throw it, 110; cynicism of its policy 
in 1854, 119, 120 ; expects to placate 
North by leaving Nebraska free, 
128 ; becomes consolidated in Con- 
gress of 1850, 149, 150 ; its position 
in Kansas struggle, 151 ; considers 
slavery in Kansas necessary, 152 ; 
hates Douglas as a deserter, 177, 
188 ; adopts Dred Scott case doc- 
trine, 179 ; urges purchase of Cuba, 
187; opposes homestead bill, 187, 
188 ; its policy described by Seward, 
190,218; considers Seward as leader 
of North, 195, 190 ; its leaders deter- 
mine to secede before Lincoln's 
election, 203, 204 ; has no real griev- 
ances, 204; its real motive poUti- 
cal ambition, 204, 205 ; dreads loss 
of political control, 204 ; process 
of secession in, 205, 20G ; leaders 
of, plot secession in Washington, 
209, 210; its ultimatum, 217, 218; 
failure of secession in, hoped by 
Seward, 224, 225 ; its commerce 
ruined by blockade, 270. See Con- 
federate States, and . Reconstruc- 
tion. 

South Carolina, fails to secede in 1851, 
105 ; leads secession in 1800, 205 ; 
demands evacuation of Fort Smn- 
ter, 207, 208 ; visit of Fox to, 233, 
234 ; promise of Lincoln to warn of 
any attempt to relieve Sumter, 245- 
251. 

Spain, Seward's proposal to demand 
explanations from, 2'>o, 250 ; joins 
France in alliance against Mexico, 
350 ; withdraws. 357. 

Spoils system in New York, 24-20. 

Stanton, Edwin M., in Buchanan's 
cabinet, 209 ; on Cirapbell's charges 
of deceit against Seward, 252, 253 ; 
favors immediate issue of emanci- 
pation proclamation, 330. 

Stanton, Frederic P., succeeds Walker 
as governor of Kansas, 175 ; sum- 
mons legislature, 176 ; removed by 



INDEX 



421 



Buchanan for allowing a popular 
vote on Lecompton Constitution, 
176. 

Stephens, Alexander H. , secures pass- 
age of Kansas-Nebraska bill through 
House, 130; on policy and aims of 
secessionists, 205. 

Stevens, Thaddeus, votes to organ- 
ize Territories without prohibiting 
slavery, 221 ; liis theory of recon- 
struction, 380. 

Story, Joseph, connected with anti- 
Masons, 11. 

Sumner, Charles, elected to Senate, 
101 ; signs address of Independent 
Democrats, 119 ; defends Emigrant 
Aid Society, 159; his bitter speech 
on Kansas, 162, 163 ; assaulted by 
Brooks, 163 ; in eyes of North be- 
comes a martyr, 164 ; votes to or- 
ganize Territories without prohibit- 
ing slavery, 221 ; on Seward's cau- 
tion in Trent affair, 301, 302; on 
Lincoln's reticence in Trent case, 
308 ; denies that Mason and Slidell 
were contraband of war, 315 ; his 
reconstruction resolution, 368 ; an 
opponent of Johnson, 383 ; aids 
Seward's plan to purchase Alaska, 
393. 

Sumter, Fort, held by Anderson, 206; 
its surrender demanded by South 
Carolina, 208 ; attitude of Black 
toward, 208 ; question of its relief 
by Liucohi, 231-236; relief con- 
sidered impossible by officers and 
cabinet, 232, 233; its reUef at- 
tempted, 235, 236 ; bombardment of, 
235 ; discussion of Seward's alleged 
promise of its evacuation, 241-253 ; 
Lincoln's promise to warn South of 
any attempt to relieve, 245-250. 

Supreme Court, desire of Taylor to 
submit Texan boundaries to, 69 ; its 
action in Dred Scott case, 168-172; 
denounced by Republicans, 172 ; up- 
holds blockade, 270. 

Tammany. See Buck-tails. 

Taney, Roger B., Chief Justice of Su- 
preme Court, violates judicial pro- 
prieties in Dred Scott decision, 170, 
171 ; his decision becomes platform 



of South, 179; declares intention to 
refuse to administer oath of office 
to Seward, 179 ; denies Seward's 
charge of collusion with Buchanan, 
180, 181; his motives for decision, 
181 ; declares suspension of habeas 
corpus unconstitutional, 293. 

Taylor, Zachary, his nomination fore- 
seen by Seward, 48 ; nominated 
without a platform, 49 ; supported 
by Seward, 51 ; elected, 55 ; at 
Polk's order, begins Mexican war, 
61 ; wishes to hasten organization 
of Territories, 66 ; sends King to 
suggest state convention for Cali- 
fornia, 66 ; urges admission of Cali- 
fornia as a State, 69; on Texan 
boundary, 69; elected free from 
pledges, 72 ; not sure of Whig sup- 
port, 73 ; not supported by Clay or 
Webster, 73, 74 ; alienates Southern 
Whigs, 74; consults Seward, 74, 75 
his character and principles, 76 
opposes Clay's compromise, 77, 93 
considers secession treason, 89, 94 
his death, its political effects, 93- 
96 ; his attitude enough to prevent 
secession, 94, 95. 

Tennessee, Johnson's career as gover- 
nor of, 375. 

Texas, annexation of, becomes issue 
in 1844, 43, 44; failure of Calhoun's 
treaty with, 44; attitude of parties 
on, 44-47 ; annexed, 61 ; question of 
its boundaries, 69, 70, 78, 92, 98. 

Thomas, Philip F., in Buchanan's 
cabinet, 208. 

Thompson, Jacob, leaves Buchanan's 
cabinet, 209. 

Tompkins, Daniel D., leads "Buck- 
tail " faction, 7 ; welcomed by Sew- 
ard to Union College, 7. 

Toombs, Robert, offers bill to regu- 
late Kansas, 105; considers acquisi- 
tion of Cuba more important than 
homestead bill, 188 ; says Seward 
blocked Crittenden compromise, 
216. 

Treaty of Paris, its terms, 288 ; refu- 
sal of United States to accede, 288 ; 
attempt of Seward to secure acces- 
sion of United States, 289-291 ; at- 
titude of England toward, 290, 291. 



422 



INDEX 



Trent affair. See Diplomatic History. 
Tyler, Jolin, his dislike of Seward, 

34 ; plans annexation of Texas, 44 ; 

his presidency, 58; signs resolution 

annexing Texas, Gl. 

Union College, studies of Seward at, 

2, 4. 
Utah, organization of, in compromise 

of 1850, 92, 93 ; Mormon troubles in, 

1S4 ; additional troops for, debated 

in Senate, 184-1 86. 

Van Buren, Martin, leads Albany Re- 
gency, 8 ; loses nomination in 1844, 
44; nominated by Free Soil party, 
49. 

Vermont, votes for Wirt in 1832, 13 ; 
Confederate raid into, 354, 355. 

Victoria, Queen, disapproves of Eng- 
lish demand iu Trent affair, 299. 

Virginia, its political decline, 9 ; con- 
troversy of New York with, concern- 
ing extradition of persons aiding 
fugitive slaves to escape, 35-38 ; 
enraged at Seward's letter on slav- 
ery, 36; asks support of South, 37; 
retaliates on New York, 37 ; defeat 
of Know-Nothiugs in, 138 ; raid of 
John Brown in, 188 ; invites Peace 
Congress, 217. 

Wade, Benjamin F., elected to Sen- 
ate, 101 ; his retort to Toombs, 188 ; 
votes to organize Territories with- 
out prohibiting slavery, 221 ; vitu- 
perates Lincoln for vetoing recon- 
struction bill, 370. 

Walker, Robert J., appointed gover- 
nor of Kansas, 172, 173 ; convinces 
free-state men of his fairness, 173, 
174 ; realizes that Kansas is lost to 
slavery, 173 ; refuses to sanction 
Lecorapton Constitution, 175 ; re- 
signs, 175. 

Washington, full of secessionists in 
18G1, 20(!, 207, 209 ; danger of its 
seizure by South, 210, 211, 263; 
demoralization of civil service in, 
263-2G5. 

Webster, Daniel, urges release of Mc- 
Leod, 29 ; suggests that McLeod 
appeal to federal courts, 30, 31; bis 



attitude complained of by Seward, 
32 ; annoyed at Seward's obstinacy, 
33 ; tries to get from Ashburton an 
apology in the Caroline case, 33 ; 
advises Harrison concerning his 
cabinet, 34; angered at Taylor's 
nomination, 74; declines to support 
his administration, 74 ; approves 
Clay's compromise, 78 ; makes 7th 
of March speech, 79-81 ; favored by 
cities, denounced by rural districts, 
81 ; his devotion to Union above 
slavery, 91 ; enters Fillmore's cabi- 
net, 93 ; on effect of Taylor's death, 
95 ; on success of Fugitive Slave 
Law, 100 ; candidate for nomination 
in 1852, 112, 113. 

Weed, Thurlow, meets Seward, 8 ; his 
connection with anti-Masons, 11, 
12 ; denies that Seward is a can- 
didate for Republican nomination 
in 1856, 143, 144 ; deceived by Gree- 
ley's professions of friendship, 198 ; 
on Greeley's letter to Lincoln, 199 ; 
urges conciliation in 1800, 211 ; 
visits Lincoln, 213 ; criticises Lin- 
coln's cabinet plan, 213, 214 ; in- 
forms Seward of Lincoln's plans, 
215 ; sent by Seward on a mission 
to England, 322 ; contradicts stories 
of Sewai'd's hostility to England, 
322. 

Welles, Gideon, named for secretary 
of navy, 213; recommended by Ham- 
lin, 214 ; objected to by Weed, 214 ; 
his appointment, 2;i0 ; not a success 
as secretary of navy, 230 ; opposes 
provisioning Fort Sumter, 233 ; in- 
terferes in expedition to relieve 
Fort Sumter, 235 ; praises Wilkes, 
300 ; says Seward rejoiced over 
Wilkes's actions, 301 ; on Lincoln's 
position in Trent case, 308. 

Whig party, begins, as National Re- 
publican party, to advocate a tariff, 
18; definitely formed in 1834, 18, 
19 ; in New York, nominates Sew- 
ard for governor, 19 ; damaged in 
New York by McLeod case, 32, 34, 
39 ; dislikes Seward's anti-slavery 
attitude, 38; defeated in 1843, 39; 
nominates Clay, 43; silent as to 
Texas, 44; campaign of Seward for, 



INDEX 



423 



45-47; defeated through Clay's 
error, 47 ; becomes reconciled to 
Seward's anti-slavery attitude, 47, 
48 ; nominates Taylor and Fillmore, 
49, 50 ; its position as to slavery, 
54, 59 ; carries New York, 55 ; elects 
Seward senator, 55 ; review of Sew- 
ard's leadership in, 56-60 ; divides 
on slavery question, 68 ; does not 
feel bound to follow Taylor, 72, 73 ; 
really destroyed in 1849, 73 ; splits 
into "Conscience" and "Cotton" 
Whigs, 80, 81 ; Seward faction of, 
in New York, proscribed by Fill- 
more, 97 ; upholds finality of com- 
promise, 112 ; nominates Scott, 112, 
113; considered dead by Seward, 
113; defeated in election, 113; 
breaks on slavery issue, 133; groups 
of, in 1854, 134, 135; unpopularity 
of Seward with conservative wing 
of, 135, 136; members of, join Know- 
Nothings, 138 ; causes for its death 
described by Seward, 191 ; its mem- 
bers join the Republican party in 
1856, 199. 
Whitfield, J. W., leads border ruf- 
fians to bum Osawatomie, 156; his 



seat as territorial delegate contested 
by Reeder, 159. 

Wilkes, Captain Charles, seizes Mason 
and Slidell on the Trent, 298 ; acts 
without orders, 300; praised by peo- 
ple, 300, 313 ; congratulated by 
Welles, 300 ; voted a gold medal by 
the House, 300; his act disavowed 
by Seward, 314, 316, 317. 

Wilmot Proviso, struggle over, in Con- 
gress, 62, 64; claimed by Webster 
as his thunder, 80 ; its necessity 
stated by Seward, 87 ; later aban- 
doned by him, 220 ; ignored by Re- 
publicans in organization of Terri- 
tories m 1861, 220, 221. 

Wilson, Henry, reconciled by Seward 
and others with Gwin, 177. 

Wirt, William, nominated for presi- 
dent by anti-Masons, 13. 

Wisconsin, admitted as a State, to 
counterbalance Texas, 61. 

Yancey, William L., his resolutions 
on non-interference with slavery in 
Territories rejected in 1848, 189 ; 
teUs Lord John Russell that tariff 
was cause of secession, 284. 



CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A. 

BLECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

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